MCP Copilot Access (mcpte002)

This note explains how to start the SPaDE MCP server for use by Copilot (or any MCP client) and how to perform a quick connectivity test.

Prerequisites

• Python 3 installed in the dev container (already present).
• Workspace root on PYTHONPATH so the server can import the kr modules.
• Dependencies from requirements.txt are baked into the container build; only re-run pip install -r requirements.txt if you are outside the dev container or after adding new requirements.

Start the server

• From mcp/, launch the server in the foreground:
  • make serve
• By default, the server uses stdio, preserving compatibility with clients that launch it as a subprocess. The target sets PYTHONPATH=...
• To use SSE instead, run make serve MCP_TRANSPORT=sse. The default HTTP address is 127.0.0.1:8000.
• The server can also be configured with --transport, --host, --port, --mount-path, and --sse-path when run directly. The corresponding environment variables are SPADE_MCP_TRANSPORT, SPADE_MCP_HOST, SPADE_MCP_PORT, SPADE_MCP_MOUNT_PATH, and SPADE_MCP_SSE_PATH. Command-line options take precedence over environment variables; Make variables such as MCP_PORT are passed as command-line options.
• Logs are written to mcp/server.log and /tmp/spade_server_startup.log during startup.

Connect with an MCP client (Copilot)

• Configure your MCP-enabled client to start the server via the make serve command (or python3 mcpcd001.py with PYTHONPATH=..).
• The server name is SPaDE-server and exposes three tools:
  • create_repository(filepath, version=1)
  • write_sexpression(filepath, sexp_json)
  • read_sexpression(filepath, seq_num)
• With the default stdio transport, clients should launch the process directly. With SSE, connect to http://127.0.0.1:8000/sse unless the server paths or address have been configured differently.

Smoke test (optional)

• Run the integration harness from mcp/ to validate the server:
  • PYTHONPATH=.. python3 mcpte001.py
• The harness checks stdio and SSE connectivity, exercises create_repository, write_sexpression, and read_sexpression, and retains the repository round-trip and repeated-content checks.