vibe-check

Vibe Check MCP is a plug-and-play mentor layer that helps keep autonomous agents on a minimal viable path by injecting metacognitive signals and chain-pattern interrupts. It acts as an oversight server that can be spawned from an MCP client using standard MCP transports. The server offers two primary ways to connect: a stdio transport for tight integration with an external MCP client, and an HTTP transport for direct interaction via JSON-RPC calls. When running, you can request health information and issue JSON-RPC commands to guide the agent’s prompting and tool use in a safer, more reflective flow. The included documentation and commands illustrate how to start the server via npx and how to integrate it into an MCP registry or client configuration.

Once started, you can run the server in stdio mode to enable MCP-aware clients to spawn it as a child process, or choose the HTTP option to expose a lightweight web endpoint for health checks and RPC requests. The README also provides example client configurations so you can spawn the server with a given transport, and it references additional commands like install and doctor for deeper management. This makes it straightforward to deploy vibe-check across development environments and CI pipelines while keeping the integration steps explicit for MCP tooling.

Prerequisites:

• Node.js v20 or newer
• npm or corepack (for npx usage)

Installation steps:

1. Ensure Node.js is installed. Verify with: node --version npm --version
2. No local installation is required for the MCP server if you use npx (as shown in the Quickstart). To install locally, you can add the package to your project: npm install @pv-bhat/vibe-check-mcp-server
3. Run the server using the Quickstart example from the README: npx -y @pv-bhat/vibe-check-mcp start --stdio

Optional transports:

• For HTTP access, run: npx -y @pv-bhat/vibe-check-mcp start --http --port 2091 Then you can query health at http://127.0.0.1:2091/health and send JSON-RPC to http://127.0.0.1:2091/rpc

Configuration for embedding into an MCP client (example):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vibe-check-mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pv-bhat/vibe-check-mcp", "start", "--stdio"]
    }
  }
}

Tips and notes:

• The server is published as an MCP-compatible package; consult the README for available commands such as start, install, and doctor when using the package directly.
• If you encounter port conflicts, switch to the HTTP transport with a different port using --port.
• The stdio transport is ideal when integrating with MCP clients that manage process spawning; the HTTP transport is convenient for direct tooling and quick tests.
• Health checks and RPC endpoints provide quick validation that the server is live before integrating into agent prompting workflows.
• Ensure your MCP client configuration aligns with the transport you choose (stdio vs http) and include proper error handling for RPC calls.
• Check for updates in the MCP registry or PulseMCP for new features or compatibility notes.