MCPfinder

The MCP server that helps AI agents discover, evaluate, and install other MCP servers.

MCPfinder is an AI-first discovery layer over the Official MCP Registry, Glama, and Smithery. Install it once, and your assistant can search for missing capabilities, inspect trust signals, review required secrets, and generate client-specific MCP config snippets.

Canonical Use

• Canonical transport: stdio via npx -y @mcpfinder/server

• Canonical package: @mcpfinder/server

• MCP Registry entry: dev.mcpfinder/server

• Public HTTP endpoint: intentionally not advertised as canonical until its tool surface is fully identical to the local server

Quick Install

Claude Desktop

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcpfinder": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@mcpfinder/server"]
    }
  }
}

Cursor

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcpfinder": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@mcpfinder/server"]
    }
  }
}

Claude Code

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcpfinder": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@mcpfinder/server"]
    }
  }
}

Supported install targets today:

• Claude Desktop

• Cursor

• Claude Code

• Cline / Roo Code

• Windsurf

Install via Agent Skill (let your AI do it)

If your agent supports the Agent Skills format (Claude Code, GitHub Copilot in VS Code, OpenAI Codex, and others), you can drop a one-line install and let the agent handle the config merge itself.

Claude Code (global):

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/install-mcpfinder && \
  curl -sSf -o ~/.claude/skills/install-mcpfinder/SKILL.md \
    https://mcpfinder.dev/skill/install-mcpfinder/SKILL.md

VS Code (project-scoped):

mkdir -p .agents/skills/install-mcpfinder && \
  curl -sSf -o .agents/skills/install-mcpfinder/SKILL.md \
    https://mcpfinder.dev/skill/install-mcpfinder/SKILL.md

Then tell your agent any of: "install MCPfinder", "connect my AI to Postgres", "I need a tool for [anything]" — the skill activates, detects your client, merges the config without clobbering, and tells you what to restart.

For AI Assistants

Use MCPfinder when the user needs a capability you do not already have.

• If the user mentions Slack, Postgres, GitHub, Notion, AWS, Google Drive, filesystems, browsers, APIs, or databases: call search_mcp_servers.

• Before recommending a server: call get_server_details.

• Before telling the user what to paste into config: call get_install_config.

• If the user only knows a domain, not a specific technology: call browse_categories (omit category to list; pass category for top servers).

Preferred workflow:

1. search_mcp_servers(query="postgres")

2. get_server_details(name="...best candidate...")

3. get_install_config(name="...best candidate...", platform="claude-desktop")

4. Tell the user what server you chose, why, which secrets are required, and what restart/reload step is needed.

Tool Surface

What MCPfinder Returns

MCPfinder is intentionally optimized for agent consumption.

• Human-readable text summaries

• Structured content for chaining follow-up calls

• Trust signals: source count, verification, popularity, recency

• Warning flags: stale projects, missing repository URL, unclear install path, single-source-only

• Install metadata: config snippet, target file paths, required environment variables, restart instructions

Ranking and Recommendation

Search ranking uses:

• text relevance

• name-match boost

• community usage (useCount)

• official registry presence

• verification signals

Each result is also annotated with:

• confidenceScore

• recommendationReason

• warningFlags

• updatedAt

• sourceCount

Data Sources

MCPfinder aggregates:

• Official MCP Registry

• Glama

• Smithery

Counts vary over time and differ depending on whether you count raw upstream records or merged/deduplicated entries. Snapshot metadata is the source of truth for the currently published local bootstrap dataset.

Snapshots and Freshness

First run can bootstrap from a prebuilt SQLite snapshot instead of doing a slow live sync.

• snapshot manifest: /api/v1/snapshot/manifest.json

• snapshot database: /api/v1/snapshot/data.sqlite.gz

• scheduled build: .github/workflows/snapshot.yml

Example Workflow

User request:

I need my assistant to read data from PostgreSQL.

Agent workflow:

search_mcp_servers(query="postgres")
get_server_details(name="io.example/postgres")
get_install_config(name="io.example/postgres", platform="cursor")

Agent response:

I found a PostgreSQL MCP server with official registry presence and recent metadata.
It requires DATABASE_URL and runs via npx.
Add this JSON to ~/.cursor/mcp.json, then reload Cursor.

Repository Layout

mcpfinder/
├── packages/
│   ├── core/          # sync, SQLite search, trust signals, install-config generation
│   └── mcp-server/    # stdio MCP server
├── landing/           # static website and AI-facing public files
├── api-worker/        # snapshot/support worker for published bootstrap artifacts
└── scripts/           # snapshot builder and other support scripts

Development

pnpm install
pnpm --filter @mcpfinder/core build
pnpm --filter @mcpfinder/server build
node packages/mcp-server/dist/index.js

Current Limitations

• The local stdio server is the canonical interface. Install via npx -y @mcpfinder/server.

• There is no hosted HTTP MCP endpoint currently served at mcpfinder.dev/mcp. The api-worker package is reserved for snapshot support and will only be promoted to a canonical HTTP transport once it exposes the same tool contract as the stdio server.

• Tool metadata quality depends on upstream registries; some servers have rich details, others only partial metadata.

• Tool-level capability extraction is currently strongest for sources that expose tool manifests directly, especially Glama.

Roadmap

These items are planned but not yet implemented. Informed largely by feedback from AI agents consuming the tool surface.

• Semantic search over tool descriptions. Today's search ranks by keyword (FTS5) + popularity + source count. It doesn't help when a user describes a capability in prose that doesn't overlap lexically with the server's name or description. Plan: index toolsExposed[*].description (where upstream exposes it) into a lightweight embedding column, expose a semanticQuery parameter alongside the existing keyword query, and rank hybrid.

• Hosted HTTP MCP endpoint at mcpfinder.dev/mcp. Today only stdio is canonical. Serverless AI agents (Workers, Lambda, browser) can't spawn a subprocess; giving them an HTTP transport with the same 4-tool contract removes an entire class of blocker. Plan: port the MCP SDK streamable-http transport into api-worker/, re-use the same snapshot-backed database via R2 + Durable Objects, gate with a lightweight rate limit.

• Capability-count enrichment for non-Glama rows. capabilityCount is currently 0 for most Official/Smithery rows because those upstreams don't publish tool manifests in list responses. Plan: during the snapshot build, probe the downstream server's README or, for npm packages, parse the tarball's package.json for an mcp.tools hint; surface per-row confidence in the extracted list.

• CI automation for npm + Registry publish. Today the release playbook (docs/publish-playbook.md) is manual and consumes a fresh OTP per package. Plan: move to GitHub Actions with NPM automation tokens and a committed mcp-publisher login step triggered on v* tags.

Links

• Website: mcpfinder.dev

• GitHub: mcpfinder/mcpfinder

• npm: @mcpfinder/server

• MCP Registry: dev.mcpfinder/server

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