mcp-doctor

Diagnose, secure, and benchmark your MCP servers.

Zero-config CLI that auto-discovers MCP server configs across Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, and Claude Desktop — then tests connections, flags security issues, and benchmarks latency in seconds.

Why?

MCP servers are becoming the backbone of AI-assisted development. But as you add more servers across more tools, things break silently:

• Servers go down and you don't notice until a tool call fails mid-conversation
• Secrets leak — API keys hardcoded in config files, tokens visible in process args
• Slow servers drag down your entire AI workflow without you realizing it
• Configs drift between tools — what works in Cursor might be broken in Claude Desktop

mcp-doctor gives you a single command to check everything, across every tool, in seconds.

Commands

All commands support --json for machine-readable output.

doctor — Full checkup (recommended)

Runs scan, security, and bench in one go and prints a summary.

mcp-doctor doctor

# JSON output for CI/scripts
mcp-doctor doctor --json

scan — Test all MCP server connections

Discovers configs and verifies each server responds to a JSON-RPC handshake.

$ mcp-doctor scan

  ┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
  │           mcp-doctor v0.3.0             │
  │   Diagnose · Secure · Benchmark         │
  └─────────────────────────────────────────┘

  ✔ Found 3 server(s)

  ┌──────────────┬────────────┬─────────┐
  │ Server       │ Source     │ Status  │
  ├──────────────┼────────────┼─────────┤
  │ filesystem   │ Claude     │ ✔ OK    │
  │ postgres     │ Cursor     │ ✔ OK    │
  │ slack        │ VS Code    │ ✘ FAIL  │
  └──────────────┴────────────┴─────────┘

security — Audit configs for security issues

Checks for leaked secrets, overly broad permissions, and risky command patterns.

$ mcp-doctor security

  ⚠  2 issues found

  ┌──────────┬──────────┬───────────────────────────────┐
  │ Severity │ Server   │ Issue                         │
  ├──────────┼──────────┼───────────────────────────────┤
  │ HIGH     │ postgres │ Plaintext password in config  │
  │ MEDIUM   │ slack    │ Token visible in args         │
  └──────────┴──────────┴───────────────────────────────┘

bench — Benchmark server response times

Measures JSON-RPC round-trip latency for every configured server.

$ mcp-doctor bench

  ┌──────────────┬──────────┬────────┐
  │ Server       │ Latency  │ Rating │
  ├──────────────┼──────────┼────────┤
  │ filesystem   │ 12ms     │ fast   │
  │ postgres     │ 87ms     │ ok     │
  │ slack        │ timeout  │ —      │
  └──────────────┴──────────┴────────┘

MCP Server Mode

mcp-doctor can also run as an MCP server itself, exposing scan, security, bench, and doctor as tools your AI assistant can call directly.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-doctor": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["@wigu/mcp-doctor"]
    }
  }
}

When invoked without arguments and stdin is piped, it automatically starts in server mode using stdio transport. You can also explicitly run:

mcp-doctor serve

This means your AI assistant can diagnose its own MCP infrastructure on demand.

GitHub Action

Use mcp-doctor in CI to catch broken servers and leaked secrets automatically:

- name: Check MCP servers
  uses: realwigu/mcp-doctor@main
  with:
    command: doctor
    fail-on-error: "true"

The action outputs JSON via ${{ steps.mcp-doctor.outputs.result }} for downstream processing.

JSON Output

All commands support --json for structured output — useful for CI pipelines, dashboards, or scripting:

mcp-doctor doctor --json | jq '.summary'

{
  "servers": 3,
  "healthy": 2,
  "securityIssues": 1,
  "avgLatencyMs": 45
}

Supported Tools

mcp-doctor reads each tool's config file from its standard location and merges all discovered servers into a single view.

What It Checks

• Connection health — JSON-RPC initialize handshake against every server
• Security issues — plaintext secrets, tokens in args, dangerous shell commands
• Latency benchmarks — round-trip timing with fast / ok / slow ratings

Quick Start

npx @wigu/mcp-doctor doctor

That's it. No config needed — it finds your servers automatically.

Install

# Run directly (no install needed)
npx @wigu/mcp-doctor scan

# Or install globally
npm install -g @wigu/mcp-doctor
mcp-doctor scan

Requires Node.js 18+.

License

MIT