mcp-probe

MCP Probe is a Rust-based terminal UI and client for debugging, testing, and interacting with MCP servers. It provides real-time protocol analysis, capability discovery, and an interactive toolbox with 373+ tools, capable of browsing resources, validating JSON, and streaming protocol data across transports like HTTP/SSE, WebSocket, STDIO, and TCP. Use it to connect to local or remote MCP servers, discover capabilities, run tools, and inspect responses in multiple views (tree, summary, and raw) with error hints and timing analysis. The documentation shows practical workflows for discovery, session management, and interactive tool execution, making it easy to explore MCP servers and automate common tasks through sessions and templates.

Prerequisites: Rust toolchain (cargo), and a supported platform (Linux, macOS, or Windows). Choose an installation method that fits your workflow:

1. Pre-built binaries (recommended for quick start)

• Visit GitHub Releases for mcp-probe and download the appropriate binary.
• Extract and place the binary in a directory on your PATH.

2. One-liner install (Linux/macOS)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/conikeec/mcp-probe/master/install.sh | bash

Custom installation directory:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/conikeec/mcp-probe/master/install.sh | INSTALL_DIR=~/.local/bin bash

Install a specific version:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/conikeec/mcp-probe/master/install.sh | VERSION=v0.1.55 bash

3. Homebrew (macOS/Linux)

# Add the tap
brew tap conikeec/tap

# Install mcp-probe
brew install mcp-probe

# Or in one command
brew install conikeec/tap/mcp-probe

Update (homebrew):

brew upgrade mcp-probe

4. Cargo install (from source)

cargo install mcp-cli

Note: The binary will be named mcp-probe (crate name mcp-cli).

5. From source

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/conikeec/mcp-probe.git
cd mcp-probe

# Build and install
cargo build --release
cargo install --path .

# Or run directly
cargo run -- --help

6. Verification (checksums)

curl -LO https://github.com/conikeec/mcp-probe/releases/latest/download/mcp-probe-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz.sha256
sha256sum -c mcp-probe-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz.sha256

Tips and common issues: - Ensure your MCP server is reachable at the target URL (HTTP/SSE, WebSocket, or other transports). - If you experience network timeouts, adjust timeout and retry flags in your client configuration. - Use sessions to persist tool usage, and leverage parameter templates to reuse common tool configurations. - For Windows users, prefer pre-built binaries or WSL2 to run Rust-based tooling. - Enable verbose logging (RUST_LOG) if you encounter cryptic errors during connection or decoding. - When using the STDIO mode for local development, pipe your local MCP server's output into mcp-probe and monitor real-time protocol flow.