01 · ABOUT

What MCP Inspector does

MCP Inspector is a tool for connecting to an MCP server and exercising it by hand: browsing its resources, listing and running its prompts and tools, and watching the JSON-RPC, HTTP and stdio-stderr traffic of the session. It is published as the npm package `@modelcontextprotocol/inspector` and provides three clients - a web UI, a command-line client and a terminal UI - dispatched from one `mcp-inspector` binary.

Why teams reach for it: One npm package gives web, CLI and terminal clients for the same MCP server, sharing OAuth tokens between them.

Self-hostedTypeScriptMCP Client
02 · TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

How MCP Inspector compares

Fields the vendor doesn't document are left blank here rather than guessed — a blank means nothing verified, not a "no."

Interface
Web UI, CLI
Transports
stdio, SSE, Streamable HTTP
Oauth Flow Testing
Yes
Tests Client Features
sampling, roots, elicitation
Conformance Testing
Partial
Install Method
npx
03 · NEW TO MCP?
How will you inspect behavior and fix failures?

Inspectors & debugging tools let developers see what's happening inside an MCP connection and fix problems when something breaks.