MCP Server Starter Kit — Production template for building AI tool integrations

[lordbasilaiassistant-sudo]

Built a production MCP server and packaged the patterns into a reusable starter kit. Sharing here since Tabby supports tool integrations and MCP is becoming the standard protocol.

What the starter kit includes

• 10 example tools with Zod schema validation
• 27 tests covering handlers, errors, and edge cases
• Dual transport: stdio + HTTP/SSE
• Docker support
• TypeScript strict mode

Key patterns

1. Structured error boundaries per tool (typed error objects, not raw throws)
2. Zod validation at the schema level (catch bad inputs before handler runs)
3. Idempotent design (safe to retry)
4. Health checks in initialize() (fail fast at startup)
5. Transport-agnostic handlers (same logic for stdio and SSE)

Links

• MCP Starter Kit: https://buy.stripe.com/9B67sE6m474T6P30On8Vi0l
• Reference implementation (10 tools, production-deployed): npx -y obsd-launchpad-mcp
• npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/obsd-launchpad-mcp

Happy to discuss MCP patterns and architecture decisions.