The study examines the composition of a random sample from the Model Context Protocol (MCP) registry, revealing that only 48.8% of the 400 sampled npm/stdio servers successfully complete an initialization handshake, compared to 66.7% for a hand‑curated frame. Among the servers that run, there are no fatal JSON Schema violations across 2,766 advertised tools, but optional safety annotations vary widely, with a 58.8% omission rate in the random draw versus 41.5% in the curated set. The authors also compare MCP tool descriptions to two benchmark corpora, finding minimal near‑duplication in real MCP tools (2.8%) and significant repetition in synthetic datasets (up to 85.6%).
Studies of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) server ecosystem draw their samples in ways that quietly select for servers that work: reference sets, popularity lists, hand-curated frames, or pipelines t...
Cartograph is a federated Model Context Protocol (MCP) proxy that reduces AI agent tool discovery from linear catalog traversal to progressive disclosure, exposing only a few proxy tools instead of all definitions. It uses operator-attested capability cards, a three-layer confusable-cluster analysis called Rift, and a two-stage retrieval process to rank servers before tools. In a 22-server, 374-tool deployment, Cartograph achieves higher recall (R@5 = 0.816 vs. 0.592) and drastically fewer tokens (475 vs. 42,450) for discovery exchanges, with minimal latency overhead.
arXiv:2608. 02685v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Coding-agent benchmarks increasingly cover long-horizon, end-to-end, and interactive development, but typically retain one requested outcome or a fixed change sequence.
arXiv:2608. 08654v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: How much an AI coding agent costs to run can depend more on the agent scaffolding that drives it than on the interface through which it reaches its tools.
The Model Context Protocol (MCP), introduced by Anthropic in November 2024, defines a standardized interface for connecting large language models (LLMs) to external tools, data sources, and services. Within months of release, hundreds of community-built MCP servers appeared on GitHub, but no software-maintenance literature has yet described how the ecosystem is being structured in production.
The paper evaluates CASCADE, a fully local layered defense for Model Context Protocol (MCP)-based systems, by conducting a component ablation and corpus audit on a fixed 5,000-sample dataset. It demonstrates that the choice of aggregation convention heavily influences reported metrics, that detection performance varies with provenance, and that the released configuration does not fully disclose the operating point. The study also shows that a local review model invoked for a third of requests does not alter classification outcomes, highlighting the importance of reproducibility and transparency in defense evaluations.
arXiv:2607. 20531v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language model (LLM) agents are increasingly deployed over Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, yet the benchmarks used to evaluate them score the final answer or a fixed "ground-truth" list of tools, both of which are fragile once the underlying data is live and stateful.
The paper investigates the reliability of language‑model judges used as measurement instruments on shared endpoints. Through two preregistered audits of 52,988 requests, the authors found that repeat rankings and byte‑identical replays fell far short of required thresholds, revealing significant instability. They identify three mechanisms—label‑to‑meaning bias, candidate gaps below the noise floor, and input permutation noise—that explain the gap, and propose a snapshot‑identity ladder, design rules, and a reporting checklist to mitigate such failures.
arXiv:2609.35381v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Many Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers wrap web APIs built for human developers, and their error messages tell the reader to run a command...
The paper reports a preregistered audit of language‑model judges used as measurement instruments, revealing that the assumption that a model’s responses remain stable over time is invalid. Across nearly 53,000 audited requests, repeat rankings and byte‑identical replays fell far below required reliability thresholds, with three identified mechanisms—label‑to‑meaning bias, candidate gaps below the noise floor, and input permutation noise—explaining the discrepancy. The study proposes a three‑level snapshot‑identity framework, eight design rules, and a reporting checklist to prevent such reliability failures in future evaluations.
arXiv:2606. 30317v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The Model Context Protocol (MCP), introduced by Anthropic in November 2024, defines a standardized interface for connecting large language models (LLMs) to external tools, data sources, and services.
arXiv:2608.28021v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large language models increasingly author Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC), where one insecure default is provisioned straight into production. P...