MCP Lab

MCP Lab is a development environment for working with Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers.

Features

• 🔌 Connect to multiple MCP servers simultaneously
• 🔎 Browse server resources, tools, and prompts
• 🔄 Test tools and interact with server capabilities
• 🧩 Auto-discovery of MCP servers
• 🔥 Hot-reload for dynamic server updates
• 🔄 Auto-connect to servers on startup or discovery
• 📁 Server categorization for better organization
• 📝 Server templates for quick creation

Auto-Discovery

MCP Lab supports automatic discovery of servers in configured directories. This feature eliminates the need to manually configure each server in the mcp-lab-config.json file.

Configuration

{
  "mcpServers": {
    // Manually configured servers
  },
  "autoDiscovery": {
    "enabled": true,
    "directories": [
      "./mcp-lab/servers"
    ],
    "conventions": {
      "lookFor": ["index.js", "dist/index.js", "server.py"],
      "packageSignatures": ["mcp-framework", "@modelcontextprotocol"]
    },
    "hotReload": {
      "enabled": true,
      "watchFiles": true,
      "debounceMs": 1000
    },
    "defaultCategory": "Custom"
  }
}

How Auto-Discovery Works

The system scans the specified directories for:

1. Node.js projects with mcp-framework or @modelcontextprotocol in their dependencies
2. Entry point files matching the lookFor patterns
3. Python servers with appropriate entry points

Discovered servers are automatically added to the available servers list in the UI.

Hot Reload

The hot reload feature allows you to:

• Modify server code and have changes automatically detected
• Restart affected servers without manual intervention
• See server updates in real-time

You can also manually refresh the server list using the refresh button in the UI.

Auto-Connect

Auto-connect automatically establishes connections to specified MCP servers:

"connection": {
  "autoConnect": {
    "enabled": true,
    "servers": ["example1", "example2"],
    "onStartup": true,
    "onDiscovery": true
  },
  "reconnect": {
    "enabled": true,
    "maxAttempts": 3,
    "delayMs": 2000
  }
}

• onStartup: Connect to servers when MCP Lab starts
• onDiscovery: Connect to newly discovered servers automatically
• reconnect: Automatically reconnect servers after errors

Server Categories

You can organize servers into categories for better management:

"categories": {
  "order": ["Official", "Development", "Examples", "Custom"],
  "icons": {
    "Official": "fa-check-circle",
    "Development": "fa-code",
    "Examples": "fa-flask",
    "Custom": "fa-cog"
  }
}

Assign categories to servers:

"ExampleServer1": {
  "type": "stdio",
  "command": "node",
  "args": ["server.js"],
  "description": "Example server",
  "category": "Examples"
}

Server Templates

MCP Lab includes templates for quickly creating new servers:

# Create a new server from a template
node mcp-lab/create-server.js

Available templates:

• typescript-basic: Basic TypeScript MCP server
• python-basic: Basic Python MCP server

Example Servers

The project includes example servers in the mcp-lab/servers directory:

• example1: A simple hello world server
• example2: A calculator server

These servers demonstrate how to create custom MCP servers that can be automatically discovered.

Usage

1. Start the MCP Lab using ./run.sh
2. Access the web interface at http://localhost:3000
3. Use the refresh button to scan for new servers
4. Connect to your MCP servers and explore their capabilities
5. Create new servers from templates using node mcp-lab/create-server.js