Overview: MCP Tools - Swiss Army Knife for MCP Servers

Title

MCP Tools – A comprehensive command-line interface (CLI) for interacting with Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, enabling discovery, management, and execution of tools, resources, and prompts.

How to Use

MCP Tools provides a versatile CLI with commands for:

• Listing available tools, resources, and prompts (mcp tools, mcp resources, mcp prompts)
• Calling tools with parameters (mcp call)
• Reading resources (mcp read-resource)
• Starting an interactive shell (mcp shell)
• Running a web interface (mcp web)
• Creating mock servers (mcp mock)
• Proxying requests (mcp proxy)
• Managing server aliases (mcp alias)

Installation

• Homebrew:

  brew tap f/mcptools  
  brew install mcp  

• From Source:

  go install github.com/f/mcptools/cmd/mcptools@latest  

Basic Usage

# List tools from a filesystem server  
mcp tools npx -y @modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem ~  

# Call a tool  
mcp call read_file --params '{"path":"README.md"}'  

# Start an interactive shell  
mcp shell npx -y @modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem ~  

Key Features

• Multiple Transport Methods: Supports stdio (JSON-RPC 2.0) and HTTP SSE for connecting to MCP servers.
• Output Formats: JSON, pretty-printed JSON, and man-page-style table format (default).
• Interactive Shell & Web UI: Explore and execute MCP tools interactively.
• Mock & Proxy Servers:
  • Mock mode: Simulate MCP servers for testing.
  • Proxy mode: Forward MCP requests to shell scripts.
  • Guard mode: Restrict access to specific tools/resources.
• Project Scaffolding: Generate new MCP projects with TypeScript support (mcp new).
• LLM Apps Config Management: Manage server configurations (mcp configs).

Use Cases

1. Debugging & Testing – Use mock servers to test client applications.
2. Script Automation – Call MCP tools from scripts (mcp call).
3. Interactive Exploration – Use mcp shell to interactively test MCP servers.
4. API Development – Proxy MCP requests to custom scripts (mcp proxy).
5. Security & Access Control – Restrict tool access with guard mode.
6. Project Setup – Scaffold new MCP projects (mcp new).

Example Workflows

• Basic Tool Execution:

  mcp call list_dir --params '{"path":"/home"}'  

• Script Integration:

  mcp call grep_search --params '{"pattern":"error"}' | jq .results  

• Debugging with Mock Server:

  mcp mock --tools-dir ./mock-tools  

For more details, check the blog post comparing MCP Tools with MCP Inspector.

---

MCP Tools simplifies MCP server interactions, making it an essential utility for developers working with Model Context Protocol. 🚀