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MCP Dev Tools · by Model Context Protocol

MCP Inspector

MCP Inspector official site ↗

Last checked against the official docs:

What it does

The official developer tool for testing MCP servers. It connects to a local or remote server and lets you list and call its tools, resources and prompts from a web UI, a scriptable CLI or a terminal UI. Version 2 needs Node 22.19 or newer.

Who it's for

Anyone building or debugging an MCP server who wants to see exactly what it exposes before wiring it into an agent.

How to set it up

  1. Open the web UI against a local stdio server:

    bash
    npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector node build/index.js

  2. Or use the CLI in scripts and CI:

    bash
    npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector --cli node build/index.js --method tools/list

  3. Remote server over HTTP:

    bash
    npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector --server-url https://example.com/mcp --transport http

  4. It stores OAuth tokens and env secrets in your OS keychain when one is available; see the README if you're on a machine without one.

Check the official MCP Inspector docs for the latest steps.

Example prompts

prompt
Help me write an Inspector CLI command that calls my search tool with query=test and checks the output.
prompt
My server's tools don't show up in the Inspector. Look at my server code and find out why.
prompt
Add a CI step that runs the Inspector CLI tools/list against my server.

Demo

Demo coming soon

A short walkthrough of MCP Inspector in action.

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