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Connect MCP Inspector

MCP Inspector is the official debugging UI for MCP servers. Useful for poking at your endpoint's tools, watching request/response payloads, and verifying OAuth flows before you connect a real agent.

Run Inspector locally

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector

It opens at http://localhost:6274 by default.

Point it at your endpoint

In the Inspector UI:

  1. Transport type: Streamable HTTP
  2. Server URL: https://mcp.shipmcp.io/<your-slug>/mcp
  3. Click Connect.

OAuth flow

Inspector sees our WWW-Authenticate 401, runs Dynamic Client Registration against shipmcp.io/oauth/register, and opens a browser tab to the consent screen. Sign in to your ShipMCP account (or sign up if you haven't), tick the write-access checkbox if you want it, click Allow.

Inspector caches the issued token in browser localStorage — the OAuth dance runs once per development session.

Static-token alternative

If you'd rather skip OAuth, set Authentication → Bearer token in the Inspector UI and paste a token from /endpoints. Static tokens are mcp scope; for write tools you'll need OAuth.

What to try first

  • Tools tab — click List tools. You should see every list_, get_, search_, filter_, count_, plus FK joins.
  • Resources tab — click List resources. If your endpoint has keep_originals on and at least one ingested file, you'll see archived originals.
  • Initialize tab — confirm capabilities.tools and capabilities.resources are advertised, plus the instructions field.

Common gotchas

  • "Method not found: resources/templates/list" — fixed; we return an empty list for that method as some clients treat absence as fatal. Make sure you're hitting the live mcp.shipmcp.io and not a stale local cache.
  • "Authorization with the MCP server failed" — usually means your slug doesn't match an active endpoint. Check the URL on /endpoints.
  • Tools missing — your endpoint's persisted manifest may pre-date a new feature deploy. Click Rebuild on the endpoint's Tools list card and re-list in Inspector.

Reference

MCP Inspector source + docs: github.com/modelcontextprotocol/inspector.

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