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Show HN: Anthropic's MCP Server Directory

11 points by punkpeye 2y ago

I started this project because I believe MCP has the potential to transform how AI models interact with external resources, but the ecosystem is still very fragmented. There's no central place to discover and compare all the server implementations available, which makes adoption and experimentation harder for developers. I initially built the GitHub repo awesome-mcp-servers (https://github.com/punkpeye/awesome-mcp-servers/ https://github.com/punkpeye/awesome-mcp-servers/), and it's been amazing to see the community contribute to it. Now, I'm taking it further with a directory that automates many tasks—introspecting servers to determine the tools, resources, and prompts they provide, inferring required configurations, and checking dependencies for vulnerabilities. These features are designed to make it easier for people to trust and use these servers in production environments. While an open-source protocol is fantastic for innovation, I also think we need a centralized channel for addressing critical issues like security vulnerabilities, dependency management, and user support. My hope is that this directory not only grows with help from contributions, but also becomes a trusted resource for anyone entering the MCP space. If you're working on MCP servers or are interested in the project, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

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SecretiveShell 2y ago
The GitHub list is a nice resource to find new MCP servers
- punkpeye 2y ago
  It is! In many ways I prefer it because it feels more organic and easier to contribute updates to. However, I am curious to see where we are going to be in several months from now. If it is going to grow at the current pace, there will be several thousand servers by then!
orliesaurus 2y ago
I like this but I am skeptical! As soon as I saw the MCP announcement - when dsp annoucned they had open sourced the repo - and started working on my own server [1]...it's quite interesting that anthropic has decided to open source this protocol. I have a couple of questions and if anyone from anthropic reads this please also let us know you're from anthropic. 1/ Why did you built a protocol like this without getting other LLM providers on board - because I believe that would have helped promoting and making this more of a unified effort, now it feels like Anthropic is running the show no? 2/ why is there a need to cenralize this now? surely anyone knows how to use npm or uvx - why do we need a directory? usually this means someone will be moderating this directory, but doesn't that defeat the purpose of letting people contribute (i.e. you will probably reach some bottleneck around validating each server...imagine if npm or pypi had to validate everything...) 3/ What are the plans for MCP long-term? 4/ Side-question: why isn't Anthropic pushing more on making it simple standardizing tools - i.e. openAI has Custom GPTs and they're basically a big RAG play but I can see how slowly these custom GPTs will be able to access more and more external services - what's the Anthropic equivalent? Thanks for any partial answer, I'm on the MCP official discord too if anyone wants to geek out :) [1] https://github.com/toolhouse-community/mcp-server-toolhouse https://github.com/toolhouse-community/mcp-server-toolhouse
- punkpeye 2y ago
  A small correction of assumptions regarding #2. This directory is not affiliated with Anthropic. As much as I am pleased by the idea that someone could somehow confuse my hobby project with something that Anthropic could ship, what you see is a hobbyist effort to help curate the community resources. I just happened to have been involved since the early announcement and it kinda snowballed from there. As to 'why', I touch on this in the original comment under the post, but: * it helps with discoverability by standardizing how servers are described * it helps with security by automating audits (non-trivial effort) and disseminating security alerts In terms of scalability, the current setup, while not perfect, has been holding the fort. I've built lots of tooling around virtualizing environments for testing MCP servers, tools for introspection, auto-setup using LLMs, etc. Will see what the future holds, but I am ready to see this grow to thousands of servers.

11 points by punkpeye 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

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SecretiveShell 2y ago

The GitHub list is a nice resource to find new MCP servers

punkpeye 2y ago
It is! In many ways I prefer it because it feels more organic and easier to contribute updates to. However, I am curious to see where we are going to be in several months from now. If it is going to grow at the current pace, there will be several thousand servers by then!

orliesaurus 2y ago

I like this but I am skeptical! As soon as I saw the MCP announcement - when dsp annoucned they had open sourced the repo - and started working on my own server [1]...it's quite interesting that anthropic has decided to open source this protocol. I have a couple of questions and if anyone from anthropic reads this please also let us know you're from anthropic. 1/ Why did you built a protocol like this without getting other LLM providers on board - because I believe that would have helped promoting and making this more of a unified effort, now it feels like Anthropic is running the show no? 2/ why is there a need to cenralize this now? surely anyone knows how to use npm or uvx - why do we need a directory? usually this means someone will be moderating this directory, but doesn't that defeat the purpose of letting people contribute (i.e. you will probably reach some bottleneck around validating each server...imagine if npm or pypi had to validate everything...) 3/ What are the plans for MCP long-term? 4/ Side-question: why isn't Anthropic pushing more on making it simple standardizing tools - i.e. openAI has Custom GPTs and they're basically a big RAG play but I can see how slowly these custom GPTs will be able to access more and more external services - what's the Anthropic equivalent? Thanks for any partial answer, I'm on the MCP official discord too if anyone wants to geek out :) [1] https://github.com/toolhouse-community/mcp-server-toolhouse https://github.com/toolhouse-community/mcp-server-toolhouse

punkpeye 2y ago
A small correction of assumptions regarding #2. This directory is not affiliated with Anthropic. As much as I am pleased by the idea that someone could somehow confuse my hobby project with something that Anthropic could ship, what you see is a hobbyist effort to help curate the community resources. I just happened to have been involved since the early announcement and it kinda snowballed from there. As to 'why', I touch on this in the original comment under the post, but: * it helps with discoverability by standardizing how servers are described * it helps with security by automating audits (non-trivial effort) and disseminating security alerts In terms of scalability, the current setup, while not perfect, has been holding the fort. I've built lots of tooling around virtualizing environments for testing MCP servers, tools for introspection, auto-setup using LLMs, etc. Will see what the future holds, but I am ready to see this grow to thousands of servers.