[Bug]: Unable to discover agent pushed through MCP tools

[AlokRanjanSwain]

Bug Description

These are steps which I performed.

1. Create and host directory api server with zot on a VM.
2. Use mcp server with VSCode and saw there are 10 tools available.
3. With sample record.json, I pushed it using LLM agent with those tools. [tool used -> agntcy_dir_push_record]
4. Next when I asked to list all agents (or that particular agent with agent name), I am getting 0 results. [tool used -> agntcy_dir_search_local]

E.g. Input params used by LLM

1.    {
        "limit": 100,
        "names": [
          "email-agent"
        ]
      }

2.    {
        "limit": 1000,
        "names": [
          "*"
        ]
      }

Any idea of why this is happening ?

P.S. I am however able to pull the record by a given CID. but what I want is to discover those agents. Anywhere, I am going wrong ?

Expected Behavior

It should show list of agent, or atleast when queried with filters

Affected Version

latest

Steps to Reproduce

push an record to dir, and try to discover it.

Checklist

• I have read the contributing guidelines
• I have verified this does not duplicate an existing issue

[ramizpolic]

Hi @AlokRanjanSwain, are you trying to discover the agents or records? There is a difference between them:

• Records are metadata about an agent, not a running agent
• Agent is a running tool like an MCP server or an A2A-based agent that is running

Could you share more what is your intended usecase? For example, are you trying to expose the agents and auto-discover them as MCP servers inside your IDE?

[AlokRanjanSwain]

I want to fetch metadata only.
Usecase will be , I have a record of an created agent, now I want to push it to the directory and then discover that agent details using some skillset requirement.
Like I add an email agent metadata on the dir, now I want to see which agent is available to send email

[ramizpolic]

Can you share your current record.json that you are pushing to the Directory which you are trying to find?

[AlokRanjanSwain]

https://docs.agntcy.org/dir/ads-records/#example-email-agent
used this one

[ramizpolic]

Thanks @AlokRanjanSwain, we are looking into this now. Will report the findings once we have recreated the issue.

[AlokRanjanSwain]

{
  "servers": {
    "dir-mcp-server": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "--rm",
        "-i",
        "-e",
        "DIRECTORY_CLIENT_SERVER_ADDRESS=<VM IP>:8888",
        "ghcr.io/agntcy/dir-ctl:latest",
        "mcp",
        "serve"
      ],
    }
  }
}

This is how my mcp.json looks like on VS Code

[akijakya]

I tried to recreate the issue, I don't use VSCode so I updated Cursor's mcp.json with the same command and args, and everything worked as expected for me. Make sure that since this command runs dirctl with docker, the client server address is configured properly to point to the correct host, in my case I ran the directory locally so I set it to host.docker.internal:8888 so it targets my host machine's port 8888.

However a misconfiguration like this would impact the record pushing part as well. I couldn't reproduce a situation where push is working, but search is not... Maybe also check your settings if every tool is enabled with the mcp server (VSCode might not auto-enable new ones if it was updated).

[ramizpolic]

@AlokRanjanSwain can you confirm if the VSCode has all the tools for the MCP server enabled? This may be the issue. We were not able to recreate it.

[AlokRanjanSwain]

When I host directory api server on my local machine(mac OS) and keep api server link to host.docker.internal,
Everything is working fine with me as well.

But I hosted the directory api server on a remote VM,
And provide the VM IP to discover records it is not working.
Is it something to do with local records search ?