Open MCP Knowledgebase

A zero-database MCP knowledgebase template for Vercel.

Use it to expose static Markdown content to AI agents through clean MCP surfaces:

• Technology documentation for SDKs, platforms, tools, and devices.

• Project documentation for portfolio, product, team, or client memory.

• Skill catalogs with when_to_use guidance.

• Build-time MiniSearch retrieval.

• Optional provider-backed integrations behind content metadata.

The default deployment needs no database and no paid provider. Content is committed as Markdown, indexed at build time, and bundled with the Next.js MCP routes.

Quick Start

pnpm install
pnpm validate
pnpm build
pnpm dev

Set a local API key:

cp .env.example .env.local

Then connect an MCP client to:

• http://localhost:3000/api/mcp/technology

• http://localhost:3000/api/mcp/projects

Use Authorization: Bearer <MCP_API_KEY> where the client supports headers.

Clients without header support can use ?api_key=<MCP_API_KEY> only when MCP_ALLOW_QUERY_API_KEY=true. Keep that fallback disabled for production unless you explicitly need it for a known connector.

Related MCP server: akb

MCP Metadata

The server returns MCP implementation metadata during initialization:

• MCP_SERVER_SLUG controls the stable machine-readable serverInfo.name.

• MCP_SERVER_NAME controls the human-readable base title.

• MCP_PUBLIC_URL / MCP_WEBSITE_URL populate serverInfo.websiteUrl.

• MCP_ICON_URL, MCP_ICON_MIME_TYPE, MCP_ICON_SIZES, and MCP_ICON_THEME configure client icons where supported.

Deployment Modes

Enable one or more surfaces with:

MCP_ENABLED_SURFACES=technology,projects

Single-surface downstreams are useful when you want stricter separation:

MCP_ENABLED_SURFACES=technology

MCP_ENABLED_SURFACES=projects

If MCP_ENABLED_SURFACES is unset, both surfaces are enabled. If it is set, only recognized values are enabled; invalid or empty configured values expose no surfaces.

Commands

pnpm dev          # Next.js dev server
pnpm build        # Build indices, then build Next.js
pnpm test         # Node test suite
pnpm typecheck    # TypeScript
pnpm lint         # Biome
pnpm validate     # Content schema validation
pnpm stdio        # Local stdio MCP, defaults to technology
pnpm inspect:stdio # Launch MCP Inspector against the stdio server
pnpm sync:list    # List sync sources
pnpm sync:free    # Run free sync sources

Protocol Safety

The stdio entrypoint keeps stdout protocol-clean. Runtime diagnostics go to stderr so local MCP clients do not receive non-JSON-RPC log lines on stdout.

Vercel Deploy

Set MCP_API_KEY during setup and connect clients to /api/mcp/technology or /api/mcp/projects.

Security

Production deployments should use Authorization: Bearer <MCP_API_KEY>. Query-string API keys are an opt-in compatibility fallback only. This template does not implement OAuth; see Security before claiming OAuth compliance in a downstream deployment.

Example content is synthetic fixture content. Keep private project memory, secrets, provider identifiers, and personal deployment domains in downstream forks.

Operational endpoints:

• GET /api/health

• GET /api/build-info

Documentation

• Architecture

• Content model

• MCP tool reference

• Vercel deployment

• Security

• MCP Inspector validation

• MCP client examples

• Provider integrations

• Provider/platform validation notes

• Observability and logging

• Sync sources

• Downstream deployments

• Deployment model decision

• Storage adapter notes

• Operations runbook

• Registry readiness

License

MIT.