I’m considering adding a local MCP server to Claude Desktop so it can work with a few project files. I don’t want to give a tool broad access to my home directory just because one workflow needs a single folder.

Can the server’s access be scoped to specific folders, or does that depend entirely on how the MCP server is configured? I’d like to understand what permission checks happen before connecting a filesystem tool, and what people do to keep MCP server permissions narrow.