Local vs Remote MCP Servers — Transcript

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1. 0:00Pretty much all MCB servers you might
2. 0:02have come across are local MCB servers.
3. 0:05These are programs usually written in
4. 0:07NodeJS or Python that run on your
5. 0:10machine and let you enhance area apps
6. 0:12like GitHub copilot cursor or cloud
7. 0:16desktop. In some cases, like integration
8. 0:18with your file system or a database
9. 0:21running locally on your machine, it's
10. 0:23necessary that the MCB server runs
11. 0:26locally cuz it's impossible for a
12. 0:28program running on the internet to be
13. 0:30aware of your local files. But in other
14. 0:32cases where you need access to external
15. 0:35APIs like an MCB server for Sentry,
16. 0:38which is an application monitoring tool,
17. 0:41it gets a bit cumbersome when the MCB
18. 0:43server runs locally. So when you want to
19. 0:45ask C-Pilot about the back in your app
20. 0:48to report to Sentry, Copilot first talks
21. 0:50to the Sentry MCB server and locally
22. 0:53which then in turns makes an API request
23. 0:56to the Sentry API. There's a couple
24. 0:58problems with this approach though. You
25. 1:00have to create and manage API keys by
26. 1:02yourself as opposed to using the
27. 1:04standard all flows. It is a backend MCP
28. 1:07server itself. You need to update the
29. 1:09local MCP instance to get the bug fix.
30. 1:12And if you got many MCP servers running
31. 1:14locally, it can potentially be a
32. 1:17performance bottleneck. However, the MCP
33. 1:20standard also defines remote MCB
34. 1:22servers. And this is not something new.
35. 1:24It's actually been part of the MCB spec
36. 1:26since day one. Although it recently got
37. 1:29some pretty significant changes, but
38. 1:31more on that in a bit. As you might have
39. 1:33guessed, remote MCB servers don't run on
40. 1:35your machine, but they run in the cloud.
41. 1:38One good example of a remote MCP server
42. 1:40is Git MCP. The name confused me a bit
43. 1:44at first as it's not about git per se
44. 1:46but about providing context about a
45. 1:48GitHub repository of your choice to the
46. 1:51LLM. So let's say we want to add context
47. 1:53about the playright GitHub repo to
48. 1:55C-Pilot. So we can ask questions about
49. 1:58playright. We can grab Rimmel MCB for
50. 2:00that add it to VS code and when we run a
51. 2:03query we get back a result. Although I
52. 2:06admit that for this example, we would
53. 2:08have gotten the correct reply back even
54. 2:10without any MCP servers. But the
55. 2:12important bit here is that co-pilot
56. 2:15talked directly to the MCP server
57. 2:16running in the cloud with no additional
58. 2:19servers running locally. If you want a
59. 2:21remote server with authorization, it
60. 2:24gets a bit more tricky for now as
61. 2:26support for that is kind of lacking in
62. 2:28most MCB clients, at least at the time
63. 2:31of recording this video. One example is
64. 2:33Sentry. And yes, they do have an
65. 2:36official remote MCP server, which is far
66. 2:39better than the local Sentry MCP server
67. 2:41I've shown earlier. If you try to
68. 2:43install it in the same way as a
69. 2:45Playright Kit MCP server from before,
70. 2:48you'll get a 401 error when you try to
71. 2:50start it. Ideally, VS Code would launch
72. 2:53a Sentry authentication page so you
73. 2:55could authorize the Sentry MCB server,
74. 2:58but this hasn't been implemented yet.
75. 3:00again, at least at the time of recording
76. 3:02this video. But there's an open feature
77. 3:04request in VS Code's GitHub repo for
78. 3:07that. What you can do, however, is to
79. 3:09use an MCP remote MPM script, which is
80. 3:13sort of a proxy for remote MCB servers
81. 3:16that can handle all as well. This means
82. 3:19that from Copilot's perspective, we're
83. 3:22talking to a local MCP, but the local
84. 3:24MCP is only a thin proxy layer to a
85. 3:27remote MCP, which you'll be able to
86. 3:29remove once C-Pilot has support for
87. 3:32authenticated remote MCPS. And yes, I
88. 3:35admit it's a bit convoluted for now, but
89. 3:38it's the early days for the model
90. 3:40context protocol, and support for some
91. 3:42features is lacking in many clients.
92. 3:45Anyways, for now to use the remote
93. 3:47sentry MCP server, we'll need to install
94. 3:50it by prepending the npx mcp remote
95. 3:54command before the remote mcp server
96. 3:56URL. And then when the server starts, a
97. 3:59sentry off page launches, which is much
98. 4:02better and safer experience than
99. 4:04generating and storing the API keys. So
100. 4:08yeah, as you saw, the remote MCB servers
101. 4:11can offer better UX for off, better
102. 4:13security, and less load on your machine.
103. 4:16But the problem is that although they've
104. 4:19been part of the MCP spec since day one,
105. 4:21the client support for them is kind of
106. 4:23lacking and there are only a handful of
107. 4:26remote MCB servers available. And also
108. 4:28at the end of March 2025, the remote MCP
109. 4:32protocol has been changed from requiring
110. 4:34a stateful HTTP connection and using
111. 4:37server send events to a stateless
112. 4:40protocol with simple get and post HTTP
113. 4:43requests and optional server send
114. 4:45events. And let me know if you're
115. 4:47curious about the details of the new
116. 4:48protocol. I might make a separate video
117. 4:51on that. But for today, that's all I've
118. 4:53got. Take