You added a server for yourself weeks ago and now want the whole team to have it. You re-run the add command with the project scope flag and the same server name. What do you have to do to actually promote it?

The principle — Scope is a property of an entry, decided when the entry is created, and there is no operation that edits it in place.

Why the key is correct — A server's scope is fixed when you add it, so changing scope means removing the entry and re-adding it at the new one. The remove step is not tidiness; it is what stops you owning two definitions of the same server.

Why the others are wrong — Re-running the add command creates a second entry rather than moving the first. Hand-editing the files would leave the original entry in place with the same consequence. And adding at a second scope does not retire the first, it merely loses to it or beats it on precedence.

Remember this — Promotion is remove-then-add, and skipping the remove is how you end up with a server that ignores your changes.

Sources — Anthropic's Claude Code MCP quickstart.