MCP Server Health Monitor

npm mcp-server-health-monitor package

MCP-native health monitoring that speaks the protocol, not just HTTP. Instead of pinging a port, it calls list_tools on each server — the same handshake your agent uses — so a green status means the server is actually ready to serve MCP requests. All health history stays local in SQLite; no external monitoring service required.

Tool reference | Configuration | Contributing | Troubleshooting

Key features

• Auto-discovery: Reads your existing MCP config files (Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code) with no extra setup.
• Non-intrusive probing: Only calls list_tools on target servers — read-only, no side effects.
• Version drift detection: Compares tool schemas across checks to detect when a server has been updated.
• Historical trends: Stores latency history in SQLite; p50/p95 are computed on-demand from stored history to surface regressions before they become outages.
• HTML dashboard: Generates a self-contained health dashboard with uptime sparklines per server.
• Background polling: Runs as a daemon so health data is always fresh when you ask for it.

Why this over generic uptime monitors?

Generic uptime monitors (UptimeRobot, Pingdom, BetterStack) check whether a port is open or an HTTP endpoint returns 200. That's not enough for MCP servers — a server can be running but failing to negotiate the MCP protocol or returning a broken tool schema.

| | mcp-server-health-monitor | Generic uptime monitors | | ---------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------ | | Probe method | MCP list_tools call — tests actual protocol | HTTP ping or TCP port check | | Schema drift detection | Detects when tool signatures change between versions | Not possible without protocol awareness | | Config auto-discovery | Reads Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code configs automatically | Manual URL entry per server | | Data residency | Local SQLite; no external service | Health data stored in vendor cloud | | Cost | Free, self-hosted | Free tier limited; paid for history/alerts |

If you want to know that your MCP servers are genuinely healthy — not just "the process is running" — this is the right tool.

Requirements

• Node.js v20.19 or newer.
• npm.

Getting started

Add the following config to your MCP client:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "health-monitor": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mcp-server-health-monitor@latest"]
    }
  }
}

The monitor auto-discovers other MCP servers from the same config file it is registered in. No additional setup required.

MCP Client configuration

Amp · Claude Code · Cline · Cursor · VS Code · Windsurf · Zed

Your first prompt

Enter the following in your MCP client to verify everything is working:

Check the health of all my MCP servers.

Your client should return a status table showing each server with its current latency and health state.

Tools

Health checks (3 tools)

• health_check_all — probes all configured servers in parallel via list_tools, measures latency, and stores results. Accepts an optional timeout_ms parameter (default: 5000).
• get_server_status — returns per-server detail including latency, last seen time, 24-hour error count, last error message, and p50/p95 latency percentiles. Requires server_name.
• list_degraded — filters to servers that are offline or have latency above the threshold. Accepts an optional latency_threshold override.

History (1 tool)

• get_history — returns raw health check history for a specific server, ordered most-recent first. Requires server_name; accepts optional limit (default: 50, max: 500).

Server registry (2 tools)

• configure_server — registers a new MCP server to monitor. Servers added this way are stored in ~/.mcp/extra-servers.json and merged with auto-discovered servers. Required: name, command. Optional: args, env.
• remove_server — removes a manually registered server from monitoring. Only affects servers added via configure_server; auto-discovered servers are not affected. Requires name.

Updates (1 tool)

• check_updates — detects version drift by hashing tool schemas on each probe and comparing against the last stored hash. Returns has_changed, previous_hash, current_hash, and changed_at per server.

Export (1 tool)

• export_dashboard — generates a self-contained single-file HTML dashboard with summary cards, per-server status table with p50/p95 latency, and inline SVG uptime sparklines. Accepts an optional output_path to write to disk.

Manual server registry

In addition to auto-discovery from MCP config files, you can register servers that are not in your Claude Desktop config using the configure_server tool. Manually registered servers are written to ~/.mcp/extra-servers.json (stored alongside the health database) and merged with auto-discovered servers on every probe.

Add a server named "my-internal-tool" running with command "node" and args ["/opt/tools/server.js"]

To stop monitoring a manually registered server:

Remove the server named "my-internal-tool" from monitoring

Servers discovered from Claude Desktop's config cannot be removed via remove_server — edit your MCP config file directly to remove those.

Configuration

--interval / --interval-seconds

How often to poll each MCP server, in seconds.

Type: number Default: 60

--latency-threshold

Latency in milliseconds above which a server is marked as degraded.

Type: number Default: 1000

--db / --db-path

Path to the SQLite database file used to store health history.

Type: string Default: ~/.mcp/health.db

--daemon

Run as a background polling daemon. Health data is collected continuously rather than on-demand.

Type: boolean Default: false

--startup-grace-seconds

Grace period in seconds before a newly started server is considered unhealthy.

Type: number Default: 10

Pass flags via the args property in your JSON config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "health-monitor": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mcp-server-health-monitor@latest", "--interval=30", "--latency-threshold=500"]
    }
  }
}

Listings

• Listed on the MCP Registry — search for mcp-server-health-monitor.
• Listed on MCP Market — search for mcp-server-health-monitor.

Verification

Before publishing a new version, verify the server with MCP Inspector to confirm all tools are exposed correctly and the protocol handshake succeeds.

Interactive UI (opens browser):

npm run build && npm run inspect

CLI mode (scripted / CI-friendly):

# List all tools
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector --cli node dist/index.js --method tools/list

# List resources and prompts
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector --cli node dist/index.js --method resources/list
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector --cli node dist/index.js --method prompts/list

# Call a tool (example — replace with a relevant read-only tool for this plugin)
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector --cli node dist/index.js \
  --method tools/call --tool-name health_check_all

# Call a tool with arguments
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector --cli node dist/index.js \
  --method tools/call --tool-name health_check_all --tool-arg key=value

Run before publishing to catch regressions in tool registration and runtime startup.

Contributing

Probe modules live in src/probes/. Each probe must return a ProbeResult with status, latencyMs, and an optional message. Keep all probes read-only — never trigger side effects on monitored servers.

npm install && npm test