hoot

Hoot is an MCP testing tool that provides a beautiful UI for exploring and testing MCP servers from a browser. It acts as an MCP client with a Node.js backend to handle MCP connections (HTTP and SSE) so you don’t deal with CORS in the browser. You can connect to any MCP server by simply entering its URL, and Hoot will auto-detect authentication methods (OAuth 2.1, API keys) and present tool options to test individual MCP endpoints, parameters, and responses. The interface includes tool filtering, a chat-like experience for tool testing, and many UX features like keyboard shortcuts and persistent state so your configured servers and tokens survive sessions. If you want to test multiple MCP servers, you can add each server as its own configuration and switch between them seamlessly.

Prerequisites:

• Node.js (LTS) and npm installed on your machine
• Optional: git to clone the repository if you prefer developing locally

Basic install (no local build required):

1. Ensure Node.js and npm are installed. Verify with: node -v npm -v

2. Run Hoot directly via npx (no global install): npx -y @portkey-ai/hoot

   This will start the backend + frontend locally and open the Hoot interface at a default port (frontend at localhost:8009 and backend at localhost:8008).

If you want to run from source:

1. Clone the repository: git clone https://github.com/Portkey-AI/hoot cd hoot
2. Install dependencies: npm install
3. Run the development environment: npm run dev:full

This will boot both the backend (Express) and the React frontend locally.

Tips and notes:

• Default local behavior stores OAuth tokens in a local SQLite database under ~/.hoot/hoot-mcp.db when running locally via npx or a local install.
• The MCP backend handles all MCP connections to avoid CORS issues in the browser.
• To deploy to edge or cloud environments, refer to the Cloudflare deployment guide in the docs.
• When testing authenticated MCP servers, Hoot will guide you through the OAuth 2.1 flow and automatically refresh tokens as needed.
• If you run into port conflicts, you can customize ports in the environment or via project config; see the docs for how to override BACKEND/FRONTEND ports.
• Hoot supports sharing server configurations via one-click links for quick collaboration.