@nightsquawktech/mcp-core

Shared runtime for NightSquawk's catalog-backed MCP servers: a stdio bootstrap plus the primitives used by the list_endpoints / describe_endpoint / call_endpoint tool pattern.

Used by:

• @nightsquawktech/proxmox-mcp-server
• @nightsquawktech/appfolio-mcp-server
• @nightsquawktech/invoiceninja-mcp-server

See the mcp-servers index for the full catalog.

The catalog pattern

Instead of registering one MCP tool per API operation (which floods the model's context with dozens of tool definitions per server), each server generates an on-disk JSON catalog of its API at build time and exposes just three generic tools:

• list_endpoints: search and filter the catalog
• describe_endpoint: full parameter schema for one operation
• call_endpoint: execute an operation, with write operations gated

This package holds the parts of that pattern that are identical across servers. The list/describe/call tool factories themselves stay per-server: spec shapes and write-gate semantics differ too much to share.

Install

npm install @nightsquawktech/mcp-core

Peer dependencies (bring your own versions): @modelcontextprotocol/sdk >= 1.6.0 and zod ^3.24.

API

Main entry: @nightsquawktech/mcp-core

import { createMcpServer, runStdioServer } from "@nightsquawktech/mcp-core";

const server = createMcpServer({ name: "my-server", version: "1.0.0" });
// ...register tools...
await runStdioServer(server, { banner: "my-server running on stdio" });

• createMcpServer({ name, version }): thin wrapper over the SDK's McpServer.
• runStdioServer(server, { banner? }): connects a stdio transport. The banner goes to stderr because stdout is reserved for the MCP protocol.

Catalog entry: @nightsquawktech/mcp-core/catalog

import {
  createCatalogStore,
  RegisterTool,
  formatError,
  type ToolDefinition,
  type ToolResponse,
  type CatalogStore,
} from "@nightsquawktech/mcp-core/catalog";

• createCatalogStore<I>(catalogDir, options?): cached loader for a catalog directory containing an aggregate index.json plus one JSON file per entry under a subdirectory (default endpoints/). Returns { index(), entry(id, subdir?), has(id, subdir?) }. Entry ids are validated against ^[a-z0-9_]+$ to prevent path traversal.
• RegisterTool(server, toolDefinition): registers a ToolDefinition using the SDK's single-schema server.tool(...) form.
• formatError(error): normalizes unknown thrown values into a readable string.
• ToolDefinition<T> / ToolResponse<T> / CatalogStore<I> / CatalogStoreOptions: the shared types.

Path resolution rule

createCatalogStore never derives the catalog location from its own module path. The server resolves its catalog directory (relative to the server's own module location) and passes the absolute path in:

import { fileURLToPath } from "node:url";
import { dirname, join } from "node:path";

const here = dirname(fileURLToPath(import.meta.url));
const store = createCatalogStore<MyIndex>(join(here, "..", "catalog"));

This matters because once the loader lives in node_modules/@nightsquawktech/mcp-core, resolving from the library's own location would point at the wrong place. It compiles either way; it only fails at runtime.

License

Licensed under the GNU AGPL v3.0. Free for personal and open-source use.

Organizations that cannot comply with the AGPL can purchase a commercial license. See COMMERCIAL.md or contact hello@nightsquawk.tech.