MCP Inspector - a connection debugging tool

MCP Inspector is indispensible for getting those systems connected to your AI infrastructure.

It has to be said that getting the dockerized version of MCP Inspector to play nicely inside a Docker Stack  was jolly painful. Most of the issues are around security. Obviously having something like this around your network is a major risk. It's pretty clear that the security people have gone nuts with this one however.

It was almost at the point of being remove when the final pieces fell into place. Once it was going it proved to be a marvel showing up issue in minutes that would have taken hours previously.

Proxy Session Token

One of the first issues that cropped up was the proxy session token. It is confusing in that you get the impression the token relates to the target of your testing. In fact it is the MCP Inspectors own proxy token.

The Session token above has to be entered into the configuration Sesion Token field, only then can you talk to target under scrutiny. (note: The session tokens in the pictures don't correspond, but they must be the one and the same). It's not entirely clear to me at this point why one couldn't automate this process. Perhaps it's some security thing - don't known really. Anyway there it is.