MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard by Anthropic that lets AI tools connect to external services — file systems, databases, APIs — through a common interface. If you use Cursor, Claude Desktop, or any MCP-compatible client, you can plug in servers to give the AI access to things it couldn’t reach otherwise.
Where to find them
- Official registry: registry.modelcontextprotocol.io — vetted, namespace-authenticated
- Reference implementations: github.com/modelcontextprotocol/servers
- Community collection: github.com/wong2/awesome-mcp-servers
Reference servers
Maintained by the MCP team. Good starting point, most are self-hosted.
| Server | What it does |
|---|---|
| Filesystem | Read/write local files with configurable access controls |
| Git | Read, search, and manipulate local git repos |
| GitHub | GitHub API — repos, PRs, issues, file ops |
| GitLab | GitLab API — same idea as above |
| PostgreSQL | Read-only DB access with schema inspection |
| SQLite | Local SQLite queries |
| Brave Search | Web and local search via Brave API |
| Google Drive | File access and search in Drive |
| Google Maps | Location, directions, place details |
| Slack | Channel management and messaging |
| Redis | Interact with Redis key-value stores |
| Fetch | HTTP fetch — let the model hit URLs |
| Memory | Persistent key-value memory across sessions |
| Puppeteer | Browser automation — scraping, screenshots |
| Sentry | Query Sentry issues and events |
| Time | Current time and timezone conversions |
Official vendor integrations
Company-maintained, production-grade, usually more stable than self-hosted reference ones.
| Server | Provider | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub | GitHub/Microsoft | Full GitHub API |
| Stripe | Stripe | Payments, customers, subscriptions |
| Cloudflare | Cloudflare | Deploy workers, manage DNS, KV |
| Notion | Notion | Pages, databases, search |
| Linear | Linear | Issues, projects, roadmaps |
| Atlassian | Atlassian | Jira issues + Confluence pages, search across both |
| AWS | AWS | S3, Lambda, CloudWatch access |
| Azure | Microsoft | General Azure services (Storage, Cosmos DB, etc.) |
| Azure DevOps | Microsoft | Work items, PRs, pipelines, repos, wikis, test plans |
| AKS | Microsoft | Azure Kubernetes Service — cluster management |
| Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft | Data platform — semantic models, lakehouses |
| MongoDB | MongoDB | Atlas DB queries |
| Playwright | Microsoft | Browser automation |
| Figma | Figma | Design context and file info for code generation |
| Zapier | Zapier | Connect to 8,000+ apps via Zapier automations |
Which tools support MCP
Cursor, Claude Desktop, Claude Code, VS Code Copilot, Cline, Windsurf, and any client built on the MCP SDK. The protocol is model-agnostic — any server works with any compatible client.
Installing
Most servers are npm packages (@modelcontextprotocol/server-github) or Python packages. Add them to your client’s mcp config block. Each repo has a README with the exact snippet.
Sources — check here for current state