Making the MCP discoverable to agents

This is the operator playbook for agent discoverability — making AI agents find the Soundcheck MCP and pick it for “staff / run a live event” tasks. It complements the end-user setup in the MCP server doc. The goal: be the registry-verified, well-described front door for any agent asked how to staff or run a live event. The wedge is that the MCP ecosystem has events ticketing-discovery wrappers but no crew/staffing server — Soundcheck owns staffing.

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What the server advertises (in code)

Set in mcp/internal/mcpserver/server.go and mcp/cmd/server/main.go:

• Implementation.Title = “Soundcheck — Live Event Staffing”, WebsiteURL (from MCP_WEBSITE_URL, default https://soundchecklive.io), and Version.
• Server Instructions — a one-paragraph “what Soundcheck is + when to use it + how to treat consequential tools.” This is a primary signal the model uses to route a task here, so keep it crisp and current.
• Protected Resource Metadata (/.well-known/oauth-protected-resource, RFC 9728): resource, authorization_servers (Clerk), bearer_methods_supported, resource_name, and — when the env vars are set — resource_documentation (MCP_DOCS_URL) and resource_policy_uri (MCP_POLICY_URL).

Tool names and descriptions are the other selection signal: they are namespaced and action-first, and the consequential ones state “preview/confirm first.”

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1. Publish to the official MCP Registry

The official MCP Registry (launched Sept 2025) is the canonical index that downstream catalogs federate from. It hosts metadata only, and is still preview (no durability guarantees) — list there, but don’t depend on it as the sole channel.

• The listing lives in mcp/server.json in the repo (schema 2025-12-11). It uses a remotes entry (streamable-http) — not packages — because this is a hosted server.
• Before publishing:
  • Verify the reverse-DNS namespace io.soundchecklive/soundcheck (DNS TXT on soundchecklive.io, or the soundchecklive GitHub org).
  • Confirm remotes[0].url is the production endpoint (https://mcp.soundchecklive.io/mcp — adjust if the deployed prod hostname differs; dev is mcp.dev.soundchecklive.io).
  • Keep version in lockstep with mcpserver.Version.
• Publish with the mcp-publisher CLI (mcp-publisher login → mcp-publisher publish).

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2. Submit to client connector directories

• Anthropic Connectors Directory (manual review, ~2 weeks). Requirements: a production remote server, per-tool annotations (already set — read tools readOnlyHint, writes destructiveHint/idempotentHint), a privacy policy URL (set MCP_POLICY_URL), ≥3 usage examples, and a logo/favicon. See Anthropic’s connector submission docs.
• ChatGPT / Cursor discover by HTTPS URL (developer mode / Settings → MCP). No submission needed; the registry + docs cover them.
• Mirror to PulseMCP, Smithery, mcp.so, and the GitHub MCP Registry (most federate from the official registry once listed).

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3. llms.txt

web/public/llms.txt in the repo is served at the site root (/llms.txt). It gives LLM traffic a curated, link-rich summary of Soundcheck and the MCP. Treat it as one signal (registry presence + tool quality matter more), and keep its links pointing at real docs pages.

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4. .well-known/mcp (later, optional)

A .well-known/mcp “advertise from your domain” convention exists only as competing, unmerged proposals (SEP-1649, SEP-1960) as of early 2026 — not standardized. We already serve the required /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource. Revisit .well-known/mcp once the spec settles; don’t depend on it.

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Roadmap

A tiered MCP is the target shape:

• Phase 1 — DONE. Tier 1 ships as a separate, unauthenticated public MCP endpoint at /public/mcp (a distinct mcp.Server instance registered with only public tools, mounted with no auth middleware — isolated by construction; it calls public API routes with no bearer token, so it cannot leak member data). Tools: get_public_org, list_positions, request_booking (→ POST /lead-requests), request_sponsorship (→ POST /sponsor-requests). Prompts: how_to_staff_a_live_event, plan_event_crew. e2e tests assert it is reachable without auth, exposes no member tools, and forwards no Authorization header.
  • Per-source rate limiting — DONE (app-level). /public/mcp is wrapped by a per-client-IP token-bucket limiter in the MCP server (mcp/internal/ratelimit), configured via PUBLIC_RATELIMIT_RPS / PUBLIC_RATELIMIT_BURST / PUBLIC_RATELIMIT_TRUSTED_PROXY_COUNT (the Azure App Service module sets the trusted-proxy count to 1 so the limiter keys on the real client IP — the proxy-written rightmost X-Forwarded-For hop — not the App Service front end, and a forged X-Forwarded-For/X-Real-IP can’t rotate the key; missing/short XFF fails closed to RemoteAddr). Idle buckets are TTL-evicted so the map can’t grow unbounded. The downstream API’s per-IP limiter can’t help here at all — all /public/mcp traffic reaches it from the MCP’s single egress IP — which is why the limit lives in front of /public/mcp.
    • Keying is per-source IP only (not per-tool). All four public tools share one bucket per IP, because MCP calls are all POST /public/mcp with the tool name in the JSON-RPC body, not the URL path. Stricter limits for the intake tools (request_booking/request_sponsorship — anonymous, no captcha/dedup, email unverified, risk ≈ the existing public web forms) are an open follow-up: enforce in those tool handlers, by parsing the JSON-RPC method in the middleware, or at the edge.
    • Single-instance assumption. The bucket map is process-local, so the effective limit is RPS × instance_count. It is exact at one instance (dev today: default_capacity=1, autoscale off). Before enabling autoscale or running MCP multi-instance, either pin it to a single instance, lower RPS/BURST to tolerate the fan-out, or move enforcement to the edge (below). Tune RPS/BURST per environment before a wide launch.
  • Durable edge option (follow-up): route mcp.soundchecklive.io through the GCP ALB (new serverless/FQDN NEG + url_map host rule + its own Cloud Armor policy), adding an OWASP WAF + edge rate-limiting in front of the app-level limiter. If you do this, bump PUBLIC_RATELIMIT_TRUSTED_PROXY_COUNT to 2 (ALB + App Service front end).
  • The Registry remotes entry and llms.txt now point at /public/mcp (the anonymous front door) so agents reach it without an OAuth round-trip; the member /mcp is for signed-in users.
• Phase 2 adds public gig/event search. This is blocked on an API change: GET /storefront/events currently returns full rosters/assignments/invitations to anonymous callers — it needs a public-safe event projection and an isPublic/org-consent flag before any agent exposure.