mcpipe

mcpipe is a wrapper for stdio-based MCP servers that adds debugging, tool name prefixing, and environment management. It sits in front of your actual MCP server and can enable debugging of JSON-RPC messages, prefix tool names to avoid conflicts when running multiple servers, and load environment variables from a file. To use it, invoke the wrapper via npx and point it at your MCP server command. For example, you can start a server with debugging enabled by using: npx mcpipe --debug your-mcp-server. You can also combine features, e.g., npx mcpipe --debug --name myserver --env-file .env your-mcp-server, which will prefix tool names to myserver and load environment variables from the specified file. When integrating with clients, you can wrap the target server command inside mcpipe so that the client talks to the wrapper first, which then communicates with the actual MCP server.

Prerequisites:

• Node.js and npm (or npx) installed on your machine.

Installation steps:

1. Ensure Node.js is installed:
   • macOS/Linux: curl -fsSL https://get.nvm.sh | bash nvm install --lts
   • Windows: install Node.js from https://nodejs.org/
2. No global installation required for mcpipe. You can run the server directly with npx:
   • npx mcpipe --debug your-mcp-server
3. Optional: if you want to pin a specific version, you can use: npx mcpipe@<version> --debug your-mcp-server
4. If you need environment variables from a file, prepare a .env file and run:
   • npx mcpipe --env-file .env your-mcp-server
5. For multiple servers or tool name prefixes, use:
   • npx mcpipe --debug --name myserver --env-file .env your-mcp-server

Tips:

• mcpipe requires Node.js and uses npx to execute the mcpipe package. No global installation is required.
• Use --debug to see the raw JSON-RPC messages between client and server for troubleshooting.
• Use --name to prefix tool names exposed by the server, which helps avoid collisions when running multiple MCP servers concurrently.
• Use --env-file to load environment variables from a file; this helps keep secrets out of your MCP client config. If you only need environment loading, consider envmcp as an alternative.
• The npm package name for this server is mcpipe.