Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Director – Local first, open source MCP Gateway
Hey HN. we’re Barnaby and Tom from Director (https://director.run). A fully open source, local first MCP gateway that allows you to connect Claude, Cursor or VSCode to any MCP server in 30 seconds. Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj4mGLp-aSk Website: https://director.run Repository: https://github.com/director-run/director MCP is a promising technology, but it's still early and there are lot's of (well known) problems: - Configuration: Hard to setup, requiring writing JSON for each new client <> server connection. - Observability:…
Director is an open source, local-first gateway that connects Claude, Cursor, or VSCode to any MCP server in seconds. Built for developers, it simplifies MCP configuration by eliminating manual JSON setup, provides… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 2 we have checked on their own sites, 2 of them free or with a free tier.
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Re-usable Playbooks for AI Agents, built on MCP.
2025 · director.run · its alternatives →
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Browser MCP connects AI applications to your browser so you can automate tasks using AI. Supported by Claude, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, and more.
2025 · browsermcp.io · its alternatives →
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Skip migration and launch MCP with built-in Auth
Nov 2025 · arcade.dev · its alternatives →
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mcp-usefree tier, from $25/mo▲581Hi HN, Luigi here. We maintain mcp-use an open-source TypeScript framework for building MCP servers and MCP Apps: https://github.com/mcp-use/mcp-use MCP is now (finally) stateless so we rewrote mcp-use v2 from scratch for the 2026-07-28 MCP spec revision: https://blog.modelcontextprotocol.io/posts/2026-07-28/ Thanks to the rebuild: - Throughput: +27% → from 8,615 to 10,982 median ops/sec - Cold launch: 2.2x faster → from 151.6 ms to 68.1 ms - Clean install: 82% smaller → from 404.6 MiB to 74.4 MiB Benchmark with methodology here:…
2025 · manufact.com · its alternatives →
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MCP-Builder.aifree tier, from $29/mo▲174The fastest way to connect your data with your AI Tools.
Aug 2026 · mcp-builder.ai · its alternatives →
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Web to MCP▲353Send any website components to Cursor or Claude via MCP
2025 · web-to-mcp.com · its alternatives →
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Hi HN, Gabriel, Co-Founder at Permit.io. We're releasing Permit MCP Gateway today, an authorization proxy for MCP servers. TL;DR - we built an MCP Gateway that developers love and CISOs trust. Watch more[0] Now, after your little hate on using fancy copy on HN, to the real thing: MCP is in a strange place. Developers are debating whether it's overcomplicated compared to CLIs or skills files. Meanwhile, enterprises are adopting it by default because every agentic system that acts on your behalf, Cursor, Claude, Copilot, internal agents, needs a stable infrastructure for connecting to tools.…
Mar 2026 · permit.io · its alternatives →
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I got tired of playwright-mcp eating through Claude's 200K token limit, so I built this using the new Claude Skills system. Built it with Claude Code itself. Instead of sending accessibility tree snapshots on every action, Claude just writes Playwright code and runs it. You get back screenshots and console output. That's it. 314 lines of instructions vs a persistent MCP server. Full API docs only load if Claude needs them. Same browser automation, way less overhead. Works as a Claude Code plugin or manual install. Token limit issue:…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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A universal CLI client for MCP. mcpc supports persistent sessions, stdio/HTTP, OAuth 2.1, tasks, JSON output for code mode, proxy for AI sandboxes, x402, and more. - apify/mcpc
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hey everyone, I've wanted an easy way to control which mcp server tools are available to clients. So for example, I might want a gmail server to only expose the read tool (but not send, delete etc). I figured if I create a cli for spawning mcp servers, I could intercept the stdin, stdout, stderr etc and modify what the clients see when they are making calls to list tools, resources, and prompts. Well it worked! In the initial version you can easily add a server to claude with a safe list of tools: npx -y mcpgod add @modelcontextprotocol/server-everything --client claude --tools=echo,add…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Synra▲87Connect Claude to your database in 60 seconds
Feb 2026 · mcpserver.design · its alternatives →
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I use Claude Code across multiple projects with different conventions and some shared repos just as it so happens to be the real world. Managing the config files (.claude/rules/, mcps.json, settings.json) by hand got tedious, so I built a local web UI for it. This one started out as claude-config but migrated to coder-config as I'm adding others (Gemini, AG, Codex, etc). Main features: - Visual editor for rules, permissions, and MCP servers - Project registry to switch between codebases - "Workstreams" to group related repos (frontend + API + shared libs) with shared context -…
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hi HN! I'm Noah, an ordinary guy that got really interested in MCP about a month ago when I downloaded Cursor. It's been super exciting to see companies around the world launch their own MCP servers empowering AI to do more. Unfortunately, I got a bit overwhelmed setting up MCP servers across my clients like Claude Desktop, Cursor, and Claude Code, so I figured I'd take a shot at building an open-source tool to help others and myself! So yeah, I built a CLI tool that enables you to quickly get MCP servers from the Web integrated with your clients like Cursor and Claude Desktop. You can use…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Every MCP tool call dumps raw data into Claude Code's 200K context window. A Playwright snapshot costs 56 KB, 20 GitHub issues cost 59 KB. After 30 minutes, 40% of your context is gone. I built an MCP server that sits between Claude Code and these outputs. It processes them in sandboxes and only returns summaries. 315 KB becomes 5.4 KB. It supports 10 language runtimes, SQLite FTS5 with BM25 ranking for search, and batch execution. Session time before slowdown goes from ~30 min to ~3 hours. MIT licensed, single command install: /plugin marketplace add mksglu/claude-context-mode…
Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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An ultra-fast, single-binary MCP server written in Rust as a lightweight alternative to Node.js/Python. - StamManif/mcp-stama
Aug 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Got tired of every MCP example being overly verbose, or needing Docker or Mac-only scripts, so I threw together MCP-123. Point it at a tools.py, run `server.run_server(...)`, and the client auto-discovers/calls functions with OpenAI. I hope this is useful to you all.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hi HN, my name is Philip, I’m the co-founder of Glasskube and one of the creators of HyprMCP. This project started when we did what everyone was doing — building a remote MCP server and launching it. Building the first local MCP server for testing was quite simple, and we had our first tools ready within a day. The next step was turning that into a production-ready remote MCP server. As we exposed the MCP server to our users, we wanted to authenticate them with our existing authentication methods. We dove deep into authentication. Our approach was to build an auth proxy and plug it in front…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hi HN, I'm Gzuuus, the creator of ContextVM this is my first post here, hope you find it interesting! I started building ContextVM some months ago, this is an open protocol that runs the Model Context Protocol (MCP) over Nostr. In practice, it’s a transport for MCP that lets you expose remote servers without needing a domain, inbound ports, or OAuth, clients, and servers only need an outbound internet connection. The problem I ran into: When deploying a remote MCP server you can feel the pain. You usually need a domain name, a static IP, TLS certificates, port forwarding, and some way to…
Feb 2026 · its alternatives →
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ContextGuard▲12I built ContextGuard after discovering that 43% of MCP servers have critical security vulnerabilities. MCP (Model Context Protocol) is the new standard that lets Claude Clients(Desktop, Windsurf, Cursor, etc.) access external tools and data sources - think of it as a plugin system for AI assistants. The problem: When you give those clients access to your filesystem, databases, or APIs through MCP servers, you're opening up serious attack vectors. Prompt injection, data leakage, and path traversal attacks are all possible. Most developers building MCP servers don't have security expertise,…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hi HN! We kept seeing devs get pwned through MCP tools in ways that security scanners completely miss. So we built an open-source analyzer to catch these attacks. Our first OSS by Mighty team. The problem: At Defcon, we saw MCP exploits with 100% success rate against Claude and Llama. Three attack patterns: Hidden Unicode in "error messages" - Paste a colleague's error into Claude, your SSH keys get exfiltrated Trusted tool updates - That database tool you've used for months? Last week's update added credential theft Tool redefinition - Malicious tool redefines "deploy to prod" to run…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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The world's largest API directory, now in your AI toolkit
2025 · openapidirectory.com · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →