registry/docs/server-json

server.json file

There are a variety of use cases where a static representation of an MCP server is necessary:

• Discoverability on a centralized registry (i.e. our official Registry work)
• Discoverability on a decentralized .well-known endpoint
• As a response to an initialization call, so the client knows information about the MCP server to which it is connecting
• As an input into crafting a DXT file
• Packaged in with the source code of an MCP server, so as to have a structured way to identify a server given just its source code

All of these scenarios (and more) would benefit from an agreed-upon, standardized format that makes it easy to port around and maintain a consistent experience for consumers and developers working with the data. At the end of the day, it's all the same data (or a subset of it). MCP server maintainers should have to manage one copy of this file, and all these use cases can serve that file (or a programmatic derivative/subset of it).

Please note: this is different from the file commonly referred to as mcp.json, which is an MCP client's configuration file for running a specific set of MCP servers. See this issue.

References:

• schema.json - The official JSON schema specification for this representation
• examples.md - Example manifestations of the JSON schema
• registry-schema.json - A more constrained version of schema.json that the official registry supports

Validation Tools

Two validation tools are provided in the repository's tools/ directory:

• validate-schemas - Validates that schema.json and registry-schema.json are valid JSON Schema documents
• validate-examples - Validates that all JSON examples in examples.md conform to both schemas

Usage

From the repository root:

Validate JSON Schemas

./tools/validate-schemas.sh

Validate Examples

./tools/validate-examples.sh