4 posts tagged with "Model Context Protocol"

While rage coding a python MCP server for NetBox I realised I needed a better way to test it. You can use CURL to make requests of course but it turns out that there is a handy node.js package that provides comprehensive test capabilities for MCP servers.

Netbox open sourced their STDIO MCP server a while back and I have been playing around with it since then. The installation requires some local dependencies and the setup process was a bit tricky, but I managed to get it up and running with some trial and error. I found it substantially harder to set up and wouldn't necessarily trust that the sort of people who would benefit from having access to it would be able to easily set it up so I wanted to create a more user-friendly installation process by building an MCP server that runs remotely as a proxy to the Netbox API.

I've had some concerns around Model Context Protocol being a new fad to put another front end on poorly managed data, like the search appliances Google sold a decade and a half ago, but I had a play with the MCP server for Netbox and it's pretty handy.

Since Anthropic open sourced the Model Context Protocol last year there have been lots of notable implementations across many areas of tech. Every day I seem to see a breathless introduction on LinkedIn to some new MCP front end to a service or dataset.