How-to guides

Each guide starts from a task, shows the commands, and ends with a recording of the same commands against a real server.

Follow along with the demo server

The recordings run against the Acme support desk, a small MCP server that ships in the mcp-tui repository for exactly this. It serves seven tools, four resources, a URI template and two prompts, over stdio, streamable HTTP or SSE, optionally behind OAuth, and every run prints the same output.

git clone https://github.com/standardbeagle/mcp-tui && cd mcp-tui
go build -o demo-server ./docs/recordings/demo-server
./demo-server -http 127.0.0.1:8931            # streamable HTTP at /mcp
./demo-server -http 127.0.0.1:8933 -oauth     # the same, behind OAuth

or connect over stdio with mcp-tui --cmd ./demo-server --args -stdio. Its README lists what it serves and the faults it can simulate.

Guides

Test an MCP tool in seconds Connect, fill the schema-built form, run, copy the CLI command.

Turn manual checks into CI scripts Replay scripts, JSON output, exit codes.

Fix MCP connection and handshake errors Wrong path, wrong transport, logs on stdout, an unanswered server/discover.

Validate tool arguments against the schema Refused calls, readable rules, sending bad input on purpose.

Inspect MCP traffic The debug screen: messages, HTTP timing, OAuth steps.

Check a server for spec compliance verify probes and the conform matrix, with JUnit for CI.

Watch progress, logs, tasks and subscriptions What a server sends while it works.

Test a server's OAuth From the 401 challenge to a cached token.

Read tool metadata and annotations Names, titles, hints, output schemas, destructive-tool confirmation.

Browse resources and prompts Text and binary resources, templates, completion, prompts.

Answer elicitation and sampling Server requests for input, in the TUI or from stubs.

Pin and inspect protocol versions Negotiated versions, pins, multi round-trip input rounds.