MCP Servers

Syntic Code speaks Model Context Protocol (MCP) natively. Any MCP server — Slack, GitHub, Linear, Postgres, a custom internal one — becomes a tool the agent can call.

What Is MCP?

MCP is an open standard for connecting language models to tools and data sources. An MCP server exposes a set of tools, resources, and prompts; the agent calls them like any built-in tool.

Spec: modelcontextprotocol.io

Adding a Server

syntic mcp add github --transport stdio --command "npx @modelcontextprotocol/server-github"
syntic mcp add postgres --transport stdio --command "uvx mcp-server-postgres --connection-string $PG_URL"
syntic mcp add slack --transport http --url https://mcp.slack.example/v1

This writes into ~/.syntic/settings.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "github": {
      "transport": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["@modelcontextprotocol/server-github"],
      "env": { "GITHUB_TOKEN": "${GITHUB_TOKEN}" }
    }
  }
}

Transports

Transport	When to Use
stdio	Local processes; the most common option
http	Remote / shared servers; supports SSE for streaming
websocket	Bidirectional with reconnect

Listing & Removing

syntic mcp list
syntic mcp remove github
syntic mcp inspect github

inspect connects to the server and prints the tools, resources, and prompts it exposes.

Per-Project Servers

Drop a .syntic/settings.json into your repo. Project-scoped servers merge with global ones; project takes precedence on name collisions:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "internal-api": {
      "transport": "stdio",
      "command": "./scripts/mcp-internal.sh"
    }
  }
}

Security

MCP servers run with the same privileges as the agent. Treat them like any other dependency:

Pin server versions
Review the code before adding
Scope tokens to the minimum permission set
Use Hooks to audit MCP tool calls

Popular Servers

Server	Purpose
`@modelcontextprotocol/server-github`	Issues, PRs, code search
`@modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem`	Sandboxed file access
`@modelcontextprotocol/server-postgres`	SQL queries with schema introspection
`@modelcontextprotocol/server-slack`	Channels, DMs, search
`mcp-server-puppeteer`	Browser automation

See the full directory at syntic.ai/mcp-servers.

Building Your Own

The SDKs include MCP server scaffolding. See the Python and TypeScript reference SDKs.

Settings — Full schema including mcpServers
Permissions — Restrict which MCP tools the agent can call

Hooks Sub-Agents