Directory of MCP Servers • Hacker News Board

Re: Directory of MCP Servers

#31

Post by maxwellg » Sun, May 18, 2025, 2:08 AM UTC

I can't wait for first-party remote MCP servers to become more common. Right now we're taking a strange detour of everyone trying to proxy everyone else's APIs and do manual API Key juggling because platforms aren't running their own MCP servers and clients don't support the latest OAuth changes.

In a year from now, Github will run a single public Github MCP server that you will connect to via OAuth - you won't need to install it locally or faff around with tokens or environment variables at all.

Re: Directory of MCP Servers

#32

Post by malablaster » Sun, May 18, 2025, 2:11 AM UTC

jappgar wrote: post #22

Is this like 10 years ago when you could find a Directory of GraphQL Servers? Seems silly in retrospect no?

I agree. There’s no need to centralize this list.

Re: Directory of MCP Servers

#33

Post by constantinum » Sun, May 18, 2025, 2:32 AM UTC

[Noob doubt]

Am I getting this right? Based on the architecture/flow diagram of MCP, every SaaS app out there can build an MCP server. But you'll need a "MCP host" to make it work, right? Right now, I'm only seeing a handful of hosts — Claude Desktop and Windsurf. Who will be building these "hosts"? I'm only seeing use cases revolving around these hosts. Is there any real-life production use-cases? How will this pan out?

Re: Directory of MCP Servers

#34

Post by happyopossum » Sun, May 18, 2025, 2:38 AM UTC

constantinum wrote: post #33

[Noob doubt] Am I getting this right? Based on the architecture/flow diagram of MCP, every SaaS app out there can build an MCP server. But you'll need a "MCP host" to make it work, right? Right now, I'm only seeing a handful of hosts — Claude Desktop and Windsurf. Who will be building these "hosts"? I'm only seeing use cases revolving around these hosts. Is there any real-life production use-cases? How will this pan…

Today there are a handful of client-side options, cline, Claude desktop, windsurf, Google’s ADK, etc. keep in mind though, we’re talking about a spec that was released around last Thanksgiving. It’s been like 7 months, and the pace of development has been blistering.

Once the authN/authZ stuff is fully codified and baked, we’ll see first part MCP gateways and the ability to connect to those tools with the Chatbot of your choice.

Consider what we see now as a developer preview…

Re: Directory of MCP Servers

#35

Post by swyx » Sun, May 18, 2025, 2:42 AM UTC

mooreds wrote: post #4

Also interesting was mintlify's decision to start one and then shut it down. https://mintlify.com/blog/why-we-sunsetted-mcpt Nice story of startup focus.

> Messages flooded in from developers both within and outside our customer base, all eager to submit their servers to get listed. The validation was clear – there was significant demand for what we'd built.

I know Han and he's a smart guy but this is very very wrong lol. there's significant SUPPLY for what he built. because everyone is just trying to self promote by putting mcp wrappers of their stuff out. the hard part is the demand.

(and also the fact that anthropic is putting up an official registry so it'll be steamrolled)

Re: Directory of MCP Servers

#36

Post by meander_water » Sun, May 18, 2025, 2:44 AM UTC

maxwellg wrote: post #31

I can't wait for first-party remote MCP servers to become more common. Right now we're taking a strange detour of everyone trying to proxy everyone else's APIs and do manual API Key juggling because platforms aren't running their own MCP servers and clients don't support the latest OAuth changes. In a year from now, Github will run a single public Github MCP server that you will connect to via OAuth - you won't need…

This is kind of what smithery does already. You can choose to install a local server, or connect to a remotely hosted server on smithery after authenticating through your GitHub OAuth.

Re: Directory of MCP Servers

#37

Post by slimslenders » Sun, May 18, 2025, 3:03 AM UTC

Community MCP servers available as Docker images are also being listed here https://hub.docker.com/catalogs/mcp

Re: Directory of MCP Servers

#38

Post by curtisszmania » Sun, May 18, 2025, 3:40 AM UTC

[dead]

Re: Directory of MCP Servers

#39

Post by tough » Sun, May 18, 2025, 4:25 AM UTC

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #29

tough wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The underlying issue is always relying on a third party, on openrouter you're trusting the end model provider to not do funny business can't really fix this

If you're paying said third party it's a decent mitigation.

maybe said third party could just run / veto most basic mcp servers so youcan run them on their server with some peace of mind

interesting

Re: Directory of MCP Servers

#40

Post by tomjen3 » Sun, May 18, 2025, 5:15 AM UTC

CSMastermind wrote: post #21

I wonder if there's a market for someone figuring out how to build monetization into MCP or something similar. Being able to offer a helpful API to the world and just getting paid whenever someone uses it would be really nice. At the moment you have to process the payment "yourself" (even if you use a third party for that), issue an API key, etc.

The market for MCP servers is the same as the market for rest endpoints: its a delivery mechanism for the underlying service.

I don't think you can make money on them, they are too simple to clone, but you can make money charging for the API. If you have a per usage license making an MCP is a very obvious choice - if you charge per seat it is mostly a question of how how sticky you are versus the competition.