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adam jones 2e7108d366

Big docs tidy up in preparation for launch (#364 )

## Motivation and Context
Docs currently don't have very clear organisation, and don't explain
core flows.

This fixes #89 (although we still might want to push these to
`https://modelcontextprotocol.io/docs/`), based on the plan there.

One minor change from that plan is that I merged tutorials and guides,
because they ended up basically being duplicates which I thought would
be annoying for us to keep in sync. Additionally in the Diátaxis
framework, tutorials and guides are separated by whether they are
focused on acquisition of skills (e.g. in a learning environment) or
application of skills (e.g. in a work environment). I expect the
registry to be something that will be used occasionally in a work
environment, rather than a fundamental 'learnable' skill so I think it's
reasonable not to have tutorials and fold these into guides.

## How Has This Been Tested?
- Read through all these updated docs
- Unit and integration tests (that previously used examples.md and use
the schema) working
- Ran `npx markdown-link-check .` to check all the links work

## Breaking Changes
Links to old docs will break, but I don't think there are any. All
internal links have been checked and updated.

## Types of changes
<!-- What types of changes does your code introduce? Put an `x` in all
the boxes that apply: -->
- [ ] Bug fix (non-breaking change which fixes an issue)
- [ ] New feature (non-breaking change which adds functionality)
- [ ] Breaking change (fix or feature that would cause existing
functionality to change)
- [x] Documentation update

2025-09-07 10:44:42 +01:00

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MCP Registry

The MCP registry provides MCP clients with a list of MCP servers, like an app store for MCP servers.

📖 Full documentation

Development Status

Warning

The registry is under active development. The registry API spec is unstable and the official MCP registry database may be wiped at any time.

2025-09-04 update: We're targeting a 'preview' go-live on 8th September. This may still be unstable and not provide durability guarantees, but is a step towards being more solidified. A general availability (GA) release will follow later.

Current key maintainers:

Adam Jones (Anthropic) @domdomegg
Tadas Antanavicius (PulseMCP) @tadasant
Toby Padilla (GitHub) @toby

Contributing

We use multiple channels for collaboration - see modelcontextprotocol.io/community/communication.

Often (but not always) ideas flow through this pipeline:

Discord - Real-time community discussions
Discussions - Propose and discuss product/technical requirements
Issues - Track well-scoped technical work
Pull Requests - Contribute work towards issues

Quick start:

Pre-requisites

Docker
Go 1.24.x
golangci-lint v2.4.0

Running the server

# Start full development environment
make dev-compose

This starts the registry at localhost:8080 with PostgreSQL and seed data. It can be configured with environment variables in docker-compose.yml - see .env.example for a reference.

Alternative: Local setup without Docker

Prerequisites:

PostgreSQL running locally
Go 1.24.x installed

# Build and run locally
make build
make dev-local

The service runs on localhost:8080 by default. This can be configured with environment variables in .env - see .env.example for a reference.

Alternative: Running a pre-built Docker image

Pre-built Docker images are automatically published to GitHub Container Registry:

# Run latest from main branch
docker run -p 8080:8080 ghcr.io/modelcontextprotocol/registry:latest

# Run specific commit build
docker run -p 8080:8080 ghcr.io/modelcontextprotocol/registry:main-20250806-a1b2c3d

Available tags: latest, main-<date>-<sha>

Publishing a server

To publish a server, we've built a simple CLI. You can use it with:

# Build the latest CLI
make publisher

# Use it!
./cmd/publisher/bin/mcp-publisher --help

See the publisher guide for more details.

Other commands

# Run lint, unit tests and integration tests
make check

There are also a few more helpful commands for development. Run make help to learn more, or look in Makefile.

Architecture

Project Structure

├── cmd/                     # Application entry points
│   └── publisher/           # Server publishing tool
├── data/                    # Seed data
├── deploy/                  # Deployment configuration (Pulumi)
├── docs/                    # Documentation
├── internal/                # Private application code
│   ├── api/                 # HTTP handlers and routing
│   ├── auth/                # Authentication (GitHub OAuth, JWT, namespace blocking)
│   ├── config/              # Configuration management
│   ├── database/            # Data persistence (PostgreSQL, in-memory)
│   ├── service/             # Business logic
│   ├── telemetry/           # Metrics and monitoring
│   └── validators/          # Input validation
├── pkg/                     # Public packages
│   ├── api/                 # API types and structures
│   │   └── v0/              # Version 0 API types
│   └── model/               # Data models for server.json
├── scripts/                 # Development and testing scripts
├── tests/                   # Integration tests
└── tools/                   # CLI tools and utilities
    └── validate-*.sh        # Schema validation tools

Authentication

Publishing supports multiple authentication methods:

GitHub OAuth - For publishing by logging into GitHub
GitHub OIDC - For publishing from GitHub Actions
DNS verification - For proving ownership of a domain and its subdomains
HTTP verification - For proving ownership of a domain

The registry validates namespace ownership when publishing. E.g. to publish...:

io.github.domdomegg/my-cool-mcp you must login to GitHub as domdomegg, or be in a GitHub Action on domdomegg's repos
me.adamjones/my-cool-mcp you must prove ownership of adamjones.me via DNS or HTTP challenge

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