Skip to content

SYSTEM Cited by 1 source

MCP Server Card (standard)

Overview

MCP Server Card is a draft standard for describing a Model Context Protocol server before an agent connects to it. A JSON document published at /.well-known/mcp/server-card.json captures the server's identity, protocol version, transport, auth requirements, and tool surface — so an agent can filter, authenticate, and integrate without first opening an MCP session.

Draft spec tracked at modelcontextprotocol/modelcontextprotocol issue #1649. Schema reference URL in the post: https://static.modelcontextprotocol.io/schemas/mcp-server-card/v1.json.

Example payload

{
  "$schema": "https://static.modelcontextprotocol.io/schemas/mcp-server-card/v1.json",
  "version": "1.0",
  "protocolVersion": "2025-06-18",
  "serverInfo": {
    "name": "search-mcp-server",
    "title": "Search MCP Server",
    "version": "1.0.0"
  },
  "description": "Search across all documentation and knowledge base articles",
  "transport": {
    "type": "streamable-http",
    "endpoint": "/mcp"
  },
  "authentication": {
    "required": false
  },
  "tools": [
    {
      "name": "search",
      "title": "Search",
      "description": "Search documentation by keyword or question",
      "inputSchema": {
        "type": "object",
        "properties": { "query": { "type": "string" } },
        "required": ["query"]
      }
    }
  ]
}

Purpose

Before MCP Server Card, discovering an unknown MCP server required connecting first, negotiating protocol, potentially authenticating, and then calling list_tools — an expensive handshake for an agent that might end up not using the server.

The Server Card lets an agent do the hard filtering cheaply: fetch one static JSON document, parse it, decide whether the server's tools match the agent's need, and then commit to a session. Analogous to an API Catalog for REST APIs, scaled to MCP.

Self-referential canonical instance

isitagentready.com publishes its MCP Server Card at https://isitagentready.com/.well-known/mcp.json (a slight variant on the draft-standard path) exposing a scan_site tool over Streamable HTTP — letting any MCP agent audit sites programmatically without the web UI.

Status and adoption

Draft-standard in the MCP repository. Per Cloudflare Radar (2026-04), MCP Server Cards + API Catalog combined appear on fewer than 15 sites across the top 200 k domains. Deliberately named by the Agent Readiness Score post as an early-adopter opportunity surface.

Seen in

Last updated · 200 distilled / 1,178 read