Tester Client for Model Context Protocol (MCP)

Implementation of a model context protocol (MCP) client that connects to an MCP server using Server-Sent Events (SSE) and displays the conversation in a chat-like UI. It is a standalone Actor server designed for testing MCP servers over SSE.

🚀 Main features

• 🔌 Connects to an MCP server using Server-Sent Events (SSE)
• 💬 Provides a chat-like UI for displaying tool calls and results
• 🇦 Connects to an Apify MCP Server for interacting with one or more Apify Actors
• 💥 Dynamically uses tools based on context and user queries (if supported by a server)
• 🔓 Use Authorization headers and API keys for secure connections
• 🪟 Open source, so you can review it, suggest improvements, or modify it

🎯 What does Tester MCP Client do?

The Apify MCP Client connects to a running MCP server over Server-Sent Events (SSE) and it does the following:

• Initiates an SSE connection to the MCP server /sse.
• Sends user queries to the MCP server via POST /message.
• Receives real-time streamed responses (via GET /sse) that may include LLM output, and tool usage blocks
• Based on the LLM response, orchestrates tool calls and displays the conversation
• Displays the conversation

⚙️ Usage

• Test any MCP server over SSE
• Test Apify Actors MCP Server and ability to dynamically select amongst 3000+ tools

Normal Mode (on Apify)

You can run the Tester MCP Client on Apify and connect it to any MCP server that supports SSE. Configuration can be done via the Apify UI or API by specifying parameters such as the MCP server URL, system prompt, and API key.

Once you run Actor, check the logs for a link to the Tester MCP Client UI, where you can interact with the MCP server: The URL will look like this and will be different from run to run:

INFO  Navigate to https://......runs.apify.net in your browser to interact with an MCP server.

Standby Mode (on Apify)

In progress 🚧

Examples

Once you have the Tester MCP Client running, you can ask:

• "What Apify Actors I can use"
• "Which Actor is the best for scraping Instagram comments"
• "Can you scrape the first 10 pages of Google search results for 'best restaurants in Prague'?"

Pricing

The Apify MCP Client is free to use. You only pay for the resources you consume on the Apify platform.

Running the MCP Client for 1 hour costs approximately $0.06. With the Apify Free tier (no credit card required 💳), you can run the MCP Client for 80 hours per month. Definitely enough to test your MCP server!

How it works

Browser ← (SSE) → Tester MCP Client  ← (SSE) → MCP Server

We create this chain to keep any custom bridging logic inside the Tester MCP Client, while leaving the main MCP Server unchanged. The browser uses SSE to communicate with the Tester MCP Client, and the Tester MCP Client relies on SSE to talk to the MCP Server. This separates extra client-side logic from the core server, making it easier to maintain and debug.

1. Navigate to https://tester-mcp-client.apify.actor?token=YOUR-API-TOKEN (or http://localhost:3000 if you are running it locally).
2. Files index.html and client.js are served from the public/ directory.
3. Browser opens SSE stream via GET /sse.
4. The user’s query is sent with POST /message.
5. Query processing:
   • Calls Large Language Model.
   • Optionally calls tools if required using
6. For each result chunk, sseEmit(role, content)

Local development

The Tester MCP Client Actor is open source and available on GitHub, allowing you to modify and develop it as needed.

Download the source code:

1git clone https://github.com/apify/tester-mcp-client.git
2cd tester-mcp-client

Install the dependencies:

npm install

Create a .env file with the following content (refer to the .env.example file for guidance):

1APIFY_TOKEN=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN
2LLM_PROVIDER_API_KEY=YOUR_API_KEY

Default values for settings such as mcpSseUrl, systemPrompt, and others are defined in the const.ts file. You can adjust these as needed for your development.

Run the client locally

npm start

Navigate to http://localhost:3000 in your browser to interact with the MCP server.

Happy chatting with Apify Actors!

ⓘ Limitations and feedback

The client does not support all MCP features, such as Prompts and Resource. Also, it does not store the conversation, so refreshing the page will clear the chat history.