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Quickstart: MCP Inspector

The official MCP Inspector is the fastest way to explore a fresh gateway: it speaks every MCP method interactively, renders tool input-schemas as forms, and displays the raw JSON-RPC frames side-by-side with the parsed response.

30-second start

The gateway ships a CLI subcommand that emits the exact Inspector config for the local server. Pipe it straight in:

```bash

Boot the demo

docker compose --profile demo up -d --build

Generate + feed Inspector

npx --yes @modelcontextprotocol/inspector \ --config <(npx --yes @thotischner/observability-mcp inspector-config) ```

Or write to a file first:

bash npx @thotischner/observability-mcp inspector-config > inspector.json npx --yes @modelcontextprotocol/inspector --config inspector.json

The Inspector opens at http://localhost:6274 by default. Pick observability-mcp from the server dropdown and:

  1. Initialize → handshake auto-fires on connect.
  2. Tools → List → see the 10 native tools (plus any federated).
  3. Tools → Call → pick list_services, hit Run. The form is generated from the tool's inputSchema.

Pointing at a remote gateway

inspector-config reads three env vars:

Env Default Meaning
OMCP_BASE_URL http://localhost:3000 Server base; /mcp appended.
OMCP_INSPECTOR_TOKEN unset Bearer token put in Authorization header.
OMCP_INSPECTOR_SERVER_NAME observability-mcp Display label in Inspector's server dropdown.

bash OMCP_BASE_URL=https://gateway.example.internal \ OMCP_INSPECTOR_TOKEN=$(cat ~/.omcp/dev-token) \ OMCP_INSPECTOR_SERVER_NAME=prod-gateway \ npx @thotischner/observability-mcp inspector-config

Why this exists

Without the subcommand, every new developer has to:

  1. Read the MCP transports doc.
  2. Remember the right session-id header pattern.
  3. Hand-craft an Inspector config JSON.
  4. Re-craft it whenever a port changes.

The subcommand collapses that to one line and keeps the config honest — the URL and headers always match what the gateway expects because they're computed from the same env vars.