unmerged-approaches-mcp

An MCP server that puts one identical brief to several LLMs in parallel and hands back every answer verbatim — unmerged, unranked, unsynthesized.

Most multi-model MCP servers end in a judge, a synthesizer, or a consensus loop. This one deliberately does not. The moment N answers are averaged into one confident paragraph, the single most useful piece of information is destroyed: whether the models actually agreed.

• Four models independently reaching the same conclusion is corroboration.
• Two against two is a real open question your one-model answer would have hidden from you.

A synthesizer renders both of those as the same smooth prose. This server refuses to, by design.

What it does

• Fans one brief out to up to 12 OpenRouter models concurrently — 400+ models, one API key.
• Returns per-model: the verbatim answer, finish_reason, latency, token usage, cost, and a structured error when a model fails.
• A slow or failing model becomes one failed entry; it never sinks the panel.
• Persists bounded, redacted, correlation-ID-addressable debug events.
• Never merges, ranks, scores, votes on, or picks a winner among the answers.

Install

stdio (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, Zed)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "unmerged-approaches": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "unmerged-approaches-mcp@latest"],
      "env": { "OPENROUTER_API_KEY": "sk-or-v1-..." }
    }
  }
}

claude mcp add unmerged-approaches npx -y unmerged-approaches-mcp

Remote Streamable HTTP

OPENROUTER_API_KEY=sk-or-v1-... UNMERGED_AUTH_TOKEN=your-token npx unmerged-approaches-mcp-http
# or: node src/http.js

Mounts MCP at /mcp and a separate liveness probe at /health.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "unmerged-approaches": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://your-host.example/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Send the token as Authorization: Bearer <token> or x-api-key. Keep secrets in your client's secret storage, never in a committed config file.

Tools

| Tool | Category | What it does | |---|---|---| | consult | PANEL | One brief → N models in parallel → N verbatim answers, unmerged | | list_models | SYSTEM | Live OpenRouter catalog: substring search, free-only filter, cursor pagination | | get_status | SYSTEM | Server version, credential validity, remaining credit, default panel, limits | | get_debug_logs | DEBUG | Newest-first structured events, filterable by correlationId / level / event / operation / time |

All four are read-only and non-destructive. The server exposes no arbitrary HTTP, shell, or SQL primitive.

consult

| Argument | Type | Notes | |---|---|---| | brief | string, required | Sent byte-for-byte identically to every model. Max 200,000 chars. | | models | string[] | Exact OpenRouter ids, max 12, deduplicated. Omit for the default panel. | | system | string | Optional system prompt, identical for every model. | | max_tokens | int | Default 8000, ceiling 32000. | | temperature | number | 0–2, default 0.7. | | timeout_ms | int | Default 180000, max 600000. Per model, not for the batch. |

Returns correlationId, requestedModels, answeredCount, completeCount, failedCount, totalCostUsd, wallClockMs, and answers[] with { model, actualModel, ok, complete, finishReason, content, error, latencyMs, usage }.

If every model fails, the call returns isError: true with code ALL_MODELS_FAILED. A partial panel is a success.

Writing a brief that is worth the money

The output is only as good as the isolation of the input. A brief that leaks your preferred answer gets it echoed back by every model, and you will mistake that echo for agreement.

• Include the goal, hard constraints, what is already decided, what was rejected and why, and what is genuinely unknown.
• Mark unverified claims as unverified. Distinguish what you observed from what you assumed.
• Do not name your preferred option, and do not tell the panel what an earlier model said.
• Ask for independent judgment, not novelty.

Environment variables

| Name | Required | Purpose | |---|---|---| | OPENROUTER_API_KEY | yes | OpenRouter credential. Server-side only; never accepted as a tool argument. | | UNMERGED_DEFAULT_MODELS | no | Comma-separated default panel. | | UNMERGED_MAX_MODELS | no | Panel size cap. Default 12. | | UNMERGED_MAX_TOKENS | no | Default output ceiling per model. Default 8000. | | UNMERGED_TIMEOUT_MS | no | Default per-model timeout. Default 180000. | | UNMERGED_LOG_CAPACITY | no | Retained debug events. Default 500. | | UNMERGED_AUTH_TOKEN | http only | Bearer / x-api-key token for the HTTP transport. | | UNMERGED_ALLOWED_ORIGINS | http only | Comma-separated browser origin allowlist. Browsers are refused unless listed. | | PORT, HOST | http only | Defaults 8787, 127.0.0.1. |

No value is ever written to logs, tool results, or client configuration.

Cost

You pay per model, per call. A 5-model panel is roughly 5× a single call. list_models with free_only: true finds zero-price models; free endpoints time out and rate-limit far more often, which shows up honestly in failedCount.

Security

• Credentials are read only from the server environment and are never accepted as tool arguments.
• Anything credential-shaped is stripped from errors and debug events before persistence.
• The HTTP transport validates Origin, requires a bearer token when one is configured, and compares it in constant time.
• Returned answers are untrusted third-party model output. If an agent calls this on attacker-influenced input, treat the answers as data to weigh, never as instructions to execute. This is a prompt-injection surface like any MCP tool that returns external content.

Development

npm install
npm run build   # syntax check every entrypoint
npm test        # 9 contract tests incl. a live stdio initialize/list/call handshake

License

MIT