[Bug]: Can't call `uvx --env-file .env git+https://github.com/dbt-labs/dbt-mcp@main` with OAuth due to ui files built at release time

[b-per]

What happened?

I tried to run dbt-mcp from @main on github, with OAuth and got an error due to the fact that the ui file are not stored in GitHub but are generated during the release process via task build.

Allowing dbt-mcp from GitHub can be a great way sometimes to test code that has been merged but not yet released to PyPi.

If we wanted to keep supporting this approach we would need to either:

1. add the ui files to the repo
   • as the js/css files contain hashes, this would lead to deleted/new files every time we change the UI
   • we could hard code the js/css file names but in that case we might have some issues with cache invalidation not working for those when we update the UI
2. or add a hatchling build hook that would run pnpm install and pnpm build
   • we could then remove (cd ui && pnpm install && pnpm build) from the build task
   • but this would require for users to have pmpm installed on their machine when building from GitHub

I think that we could potentially go with either options (a slight preference for option 2), but what do people think?

Steps to Reproduce

1. set an env var file with just the DBT_HOST
2. run uvx --env-file .env git+https://github.com/dbt-labs/dbt-mcp@main

Deployment

Local MCP server

Environment

No response

Relevant log output

[jairus-m]

I came across this error as well when working on the CI/CD portion of the MCP bundle. I think given the hashing of the ui artifacts as well as the potential to remove (cd ui && pnpm install && pnpm build) from multiple tasks, option 2 sounds nice.

but this would require for users to have pmpm installed on their machine when building from GitHub

if this is purely ergonomics for people developing and testing, i think this is fine! we already have to install other system dependencies like task anyways on our own. so +1 for option 2 imho

[b-per]

Tx! If no other opinion in the next 12 hours I will go with Option 2 😄