Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to MCPcat – A free open-source library for MCP server monitoring
Hey everyone! We've been working with several MCP server maintainers and we noticed some difficulties getting drop-in logging and identity attribution working out of the box with existing vendors. A couple of challenges we hoped to solve were: - Baseline piping of tool calls to traditional vendors - How to tie tool calls to a “user session” - Understanding the context behind tool calls made by agents So we built something. :) The MCPcat library is completely free to use, MIT licensed, and provides a one-line solution for adding logging and observability to any vendor that supports…
MCPcat is a free, MIT-licensed library that adds logging and observability to MCP servers with a single line of code. It captures tool calls, tracks user sessions, and provides context for agent actions, then pipes… 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 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier.
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Hey HN, Gal, Nir and Doron here. Over the past 2 years, we've helped teams debug everything from prompt issues to production outages. We kept running into the same problem: Jumping between our IDEs and our observability dashboards. So, we built an open-source MCP server that connects any OpenTelemetry backend (Grafana, Jaeger, Datadog, Dynatrace, Traceloop) to our dev environment using an MCP. While there are many MCP servers built for specific providers (like Datadog’s - https://docs.datadoghq.com/bits_ai/mcp_server), they’re closed source (so we can’t easily extend…
Nov 2025 · github.com · 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 Playground▲160MCP Playground is a Postman-style tool for MCP — inspect servers, execute tools live, test your client, all from the browser. Four things in one place: 1. Free hosted MCP servers — four public test servers anyone can point their client at: Echo (connectivity), Auth (Bearer token flow), Error (error handling), Complex (multi-tool schemas).No sign-up, just use the URL. 2. Server inspector — paste any remote MCP server URL, see all its tools/resources/prompts, execute them live, inspect the full JSON-RPC log. HTTP, SSE, and WebSocket all supported. 3. Registry — 10,000+ servers…
Nov 2025 · mcpplayground.io · its alternatives →
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I noticed the growing security concerns around MCP (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43600192) and built an open source tool that can detect several patterns of tool poisoning attacks, exfiltration channels and cross-origin manipulations. MCP-Shield scans your installed servers (Cursor, Claude Desktop, etc.) and shows what each tool is trying to do at the instruction level, beyond just the API surface. It catches hidden instructions that try to read sensitive files, shadow other tools' behavior, or exfiltrate data. Example of what it detects: - Hidden instructions…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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MCPCore▲80MCPCore is a complete MCP hosting and MCP cloud platform. Create, build, and deploy MCP servers in minutes, then manage auth, secrets, and analytics from a single dashboard.
Mar 2026 · mcpcore.io · its alternatives →
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mTarsier▲188Open-source platform for managing MCP servers and clients
Mar 2026 · mtarsier.com · its alternatives →
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Open-source Computer Use MCP for AI agents
May 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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0xAudit▲110The security layer for AI agents to scan, fix verify via MCP
Feb 2026 · 0-x-audit.com · its alternatives →
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MCPJam Inspector▲141Hi HN, I'm Matt, founder of MCPJam. We're building open source dev tools for MCP server builders. There’s been a lot of debate around skills vs MCP. From what I see, there’s a growing trend of people using skills paired with MCP servers. Skills teach the agent how to use the MCP server tools and guide the agent to completing complex workflows. We’re also seeing Anthropic encourage the use of Skills + MCP in their products. Anthropic recently launched the connectors marketplace. A good example of this is the Figma connector + skills. The Figma skill teaches the agent how to use the Figma MCP…
Jan 2026 · mcpjam.com · its alternatives →
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Open source APM: OpenTelemetry traces, metrics, and logs - uptrace/uptrace
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
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We built a Rust MCP server, which wraps the excellent headless terminal (HT)[1] to makes it available for agentic coding tools. Most agentic coding tools struggle with blocking, interactive terminal tools (all the boilerplate generator, infra CLI tools etc). This is because many existing CLI dev tools are built for humans and require interactive input. We built this so agentic coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Memex, etc) can “see” and “interact” with terminals exactly like humans do. In our demo video [2], you'll see it operating vim/emacs just as a human would - selecting options,…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hi HN! We’re Theodore and Louis, founders of Armature (YC P26). We reconstruct the entire session behind the MCP tool calls you receive, including what the user asked their agent to do and what the agent thought. You wrap your MCP in 3 lines of code (our SDK is available in Typescript, Python and Go) and start seeing in your dashboard: - All sessions reconstructed: it’s like reading the real conversation the user had inside Claude or ChatGPT! - A ranking of your MCP most popular use cases, built from sessions clustering - The most frequent issues your users’ agents encounter so you can fix…
Aug 2026 · armature.tech · its alternatives →
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Wireshark for MCP. A transparent proxy that shows every real tool call between your AI client and your MCP servers, live in your terminal. - kerlenton/mcpsnoop
Jul 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Large Language Models (LLMs) are powerful, but they’re limited by fixed context windows and outdated knowledge. What if your AI could access live search, structured data extraction, OCR, and more—all through a standardized interface? We built the JigsawStack MCP Server, an open-source implementation of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) that lets any AI model call external tools effortlessly. Here’s what it unlocks: - Web Search & Scraping: Fetch live information and extract structured data from web pages. - OCR & Structured Data Extraction: Process images, receipts, invoices, and handwritten…
2025 · 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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This is an open‑source Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that gives any LLM a sense of the passage of time. Most MCP demos wire LLMs to external data stores. That’s useful, but MCP is also a chance to give models perception — extra senses beyond the prompt text. Six functions (`current_datetime`, `time_difference`, `timestamp_context`, etc.) give Claude/GPT real temporal awareness: It can spot pauses, reason about rhythms, and even label a chat’s “three‑act structure”. Runs locally in <60 s (Python) or via a hosted demo. If time works, what else could we surface? - Location /…
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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Wireshark-like forensic analysis for Model Context Protocol communications Capture, inspect, and investigate all HTTP requests and responses between your IDE and MCP servers - mcp-shark/mcp-shark
Nov 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hi HN, We’re building security tooling around agentic AI systems. Today, we're releasing our public MCP catalog with detailed risk analysis for every MCP server we've found on the internet: https://mcp.armor1.ai/mcp-directory We all love agents and the power that MCPs unlock: suddenly your AI assistant can query databases, manage files, call APIs, and interact with the real world. But when we started adopting MCPs ourselves, we kept running into the same nagging questions: Is this MCP safe? Where is my data actually going? Could it execute destructive actions? Is it…
Feb 2026 · mcp.armor1.ai · its alternatives →
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I built an unofficial CLI and MCP server for Lambda cloud GPU instances. The main idea: your AI agents can now spin up and manage Lambda GPUs for you. The MCP server exposes tools to find, launch, and terminate instances. Add it to Claude Code, Cursor, or any agent with one command and you can say things like "launch an H100, ssh in, and run big_job.py" Other features: - Notifications via Slack, Discord, or Telegram when instances are SSH-ready - 1Password support for API keys - Also includes a standalone CLI with the same functionality Written in Rust. MIT licensed. Note: This is an…
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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https://github.com/mcp-shark/mcp-shark Site: https://mcpshark.sh/ I built MCPShark, a traffic inspector for the Model Context Protocol (MCP). It sits between your editor/LLM client and MCP servers so you can: • See all MCP traffic (requests, responses, tools, resources) in one place • Debug sessions when tools don’t behave as expected • Optionally run “Smart Scan” checks to flag risky tools / configs
Dec 2025 · 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 →