inspector/clients/launcher/README.md

MCP Inspector Launcher

The launcher is the package that provides the global mcp-inspector binary (e.g. when users run npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector). It is not a separate user-facing app—it is the single entrypoint that selects and runs one of the clients (web, CLI, or TUI).

Responsibility

• Parse the mode flag: --web (default), --cli, or --tui.
• Forward the rest of process.argv to the chosen app.
• Dynamically import that app’s runner from clients/{web,cli,tui}/build/index.js (relative to the launcher build output) and call it in-process (no spawn()).

All configuration parsing, config-file loading, and server setup are handled by the app runners and by core; the launcher does not interpret config or env vars.

Publishing

The root @modelcontextprotocol/inspector package ships as one fat tarball: npm run build at the repo root builds all clients, then prepack runs before npm publish. Runtime dependencies are declared on the root package.json; client builds bundle @inspector/core and externalize npm packages resolved from the root install.

Architecture

For how the launcher fits with the shared config processor and app runners, see the Launcher and config consolidation document in the repo root docs/ folder.