The Model Context Protocol shipped in November 2024. Eighteen months later, the directory is sprawling. There are public lists of "thousands of MCP servers." Most of them are forks, demos, or hello-world wrappers around someone's REST API. A small minority is what an agent actually needs to do real work without breaking your trust in your data.
This post is the working directory: 27 MCP servers worth installing in 2026, grouped by what your agent is trying to do, with notes on which ones are deep and which ones are thin. The goal is the post you bookmark when you are about to add a new tool to your agent's belt and you want to know if you are picking the canonical one.
If you are new to the protocol itself, Anthropic's spec is the reference. If you want the architectural argument for designing MCP-first instead of MCP-bolted-on, we wrote that piece earlier.
How to read this list
Each entry below covers four things:
- What it is. One line.
- Why install it. The use case the agent gets from it.
- Depth. Shallow / Medium / Deep. Shallow servers are <10 tools, mostly REST wrappers. Deep servers are 30+ tools, designed for agent intent, with batch operations and webhooks.
- Watch out for. The trap.
Servers we have personally installed and used in production are flagged with a green dot. Servers we have evaluated but not installed are flagged with a hollow dot.
Workspace + collaboration
1. Dock 🟢
What it is. The MCP server for a shared workspace where humans and agents are first-class members of the same docs, tables, boards, and templates.
Why install it. Your agent gets a real place to work, not a chat history. It can read the same surface your team reads, write into the same surface your team writes into, and every action is attributed under the agent's own identity, not yours.
Depth. Deep. 43 tools spanning workspaces, surfaces, rows, docs, comments, members, billing, and search, plus webhooks for every state change and a two-call consent gate on dangerous operations. (The four design decisions that come out of building MCP-first.)
Watch out for. Nothing in the protocol guarantees this depth. We made these choices because we had to. Most workspace MCPs from non-MCP-first products are 15-tool REST wrappers.
2. Notion ⚪
What it is. Notion's official MCP server, exposing pages, blocks, databases, and search.
Why install it. If your team already lives in Notion, the agent gets to read and edit the docs your team is editing.
Depth. Medium. Reads are solid. Writes are constrained. Block-level editing is awkward because Notion's block model leaks through.
Watch out for. The agent acts under the connector's installer (a human). Audit logs say "Govind edited page" when actually Argus did. This is the agents-borrowing-human-credentials problem at the protocol layer.
3. Linear 🟢
What it is. Linear's official MCP server, exposing issues, projects, cycles, and the activity feed.
Why install it. Engineering agents (Linear Agent itself, plus your own) read the same backlog the team reads, can open issues, comment, and ship PRs against linked issues.
Depth. Medium-deep. Linear's data model is clean and the MCP exposes most of it. Webhooks via SSE.
Watch out for. Cross-workspace. If you have multiple Linear workspaces (org + personal + team-x), per-workspace scoping is awkward. Default install pulls everything.
4. Slack ⚪
What it is. A read/write surface over Slack channels, threads, DMs, and reactions.
Why install it. Lets the agent participate in conversations as a member, not as a webhook bot. Posting, replying, reading, summarizing.
Depth. Medium. The Slack API is rich. The MCP exposes most of it but the rate-limit model is brutal under agent traffic.
Watch out for. Slack's bot tokens vs. user tokens. Most MCP installs default to user-token (acts as you), which means messages from the agent show up as messages from you. Use bot tokens.
5. Google Workspace ⚪
What it is. Drive, Docs, Sheets, Calendar, Gmail, all behind one MCP server.
Why install it. Most teams' canonical files, calendars, and inboxes live here.
Depth. Shallow-medium. The breadth is huge but each individual surface is thin. Editing docs is particularly limited.
Watch out for. The OAuth scope grid. Granting the MCP "edit Drive" usually means edit all of Drive. There is no per-folder scope. Plan accordingly.
Code + dev tools
6. GitHub 🟢
What it is. Anthropic-maintained MCP server for repos, issues, pull requests, branches, files, and CI checks.
Why install it. It is the canonical agent surface for code work. Read repos, propose PRs, review diffs, comment on issues.
Depth. Deep. Tools are designed for the actions agents need, not just CRUD wrappers.
Watch out for. The default GitHub App scope. If you point an agent at "all repos in the org," that is what it gets. Per-repo scoping is supported but not the default.
7. Filesystem 🟢
What it is. The reference filesystem MCP server from Anthropic. Read, write, list, search files in scoped directories.
Why install it. Local development, scratch directories, agent inboxes. Whenever the agent needs to read or write a file on the host, this is the canonical surface.
Depth. Deep for what it does. Small surface, well-considered tools.
Watch out for. The scope. Always pass --allowed-directories explicitly. Default-scope-the-whole-disk is the recipe for the agent rewriting your dotfiles.
8. Git 🟢
What it is. A git-only MCP, separate from GitHub: branch, diff, log, blame, commit, all on a local repo.
Why install it. Code-writing agents need to understand the diff they are proposing, not just the file they are editing. Git surface is essential.
Depth. Medium. The reference implementation is solid.
Watch out for. Agents that auto-commit. The MCP exposes commit and many agents will use it eagerly. Pair with a review gate.
9. Cursor MCP 🟢
What it is. Cursor's MCP integration that lets external agents call into the editor (open files, run edits, see diagnostics).
Why install it. When your agent is the brain and Cursor is the IDE, this is how they meet.
Depth. Medium. Improving fast.
Watch out for. The agent can move your cursor while you type. Have a focus protocol.
10. Stack Overflow 🟢
What it is. Anthropic-collaborated MCP exposing Stack Overflow Q+A, tags, and accepted answers.
Why install it. A coding agent that grounds in Stack Overflow answers is materially better than one that does not. Adds citation-shaped context.
Depth. Shallow. Read-only. That is fine for this use case.
Watch out for. Stale answers. Many SO answers from 2018 are wrong about 2026 frameworks. Pair with a recency filter.
11. Sentry 🟢
What it is. Sentry's MCP for error reports, issue groups, releases, and source maps.
Why install it. A debugging agent that sees real production errors and traces them back to commits closes the loop on its own work.
Depth. Medium. Read-heavy by design.
Watch out for. PII in error payloads. If your Sentry events leak user emails, the agent sees them. Configure scrubbing first.
Browser + scraping
12. Playwright 🟢
What it is. Microsoft-maintained MCP that drives a Chromium / WebKit / Firefox browser, with structured DOM access.
Why install it. The canonical "let the agent see and click around the web" surface. Scraping, testing, end-to-end flows.
Depth. Deep. Hundreds of methods exposed via tools.
Watch out for. The agent will happily try to log into things if you let it. Pair with the dangerous-ops contract.
13. Chrome DevTools 🟢
What it is. A Chrome DevTools MCP that gives the agent network logs, console errors, performance traces, and the inspection tree of any page it is browsing.
Why install it. Debugging frontend issues. The agent sees the same console you do.
Depth. Medium.
Watch out for. Performance overhead. DevTools attach is heavy on the browser. Use it for debugging sessions, not always-on.
14. Firecrawl ⚪
What it is. A scraping MCP that turns websites into clean markdown.
Why install it. When the agent needs to read a page, not click through it, this is faster and more LLM-friendly than running Playwright.
Depth. Medium. Single-purpose, well-shaped.
Watch out for. Robots.txt and rate limits. The MCP respects them but the agent has to know to.
Observability + analytics
15. Datadog ⚪
What it is. Datadog's MCP for metrics, logs, traces, and dashboards.
Why install it. An on-call agent that can answer "is our latency up?" by actually checking, instead of guessing.
Depth. Medium. Heavy on reads.
Watch out for. Cost. Datadog query traffic is metered. An agent in a tight loop can rack up bills.
16. PostHog 🟢
What it is. PostHog's MCP for events, funnels, cohorts, feature flags, and session replays.
Why install it. Product agents that answer "did the new flow work?" by checking the actual conversion data.
Depth. Medium-deep. PostHog's API is broad and the MCP exposes most of it.
Watch out for. Session replay tools can fetch full replays. Replays often contain PII. Scope carefully.
17. Grafana ⚪
What it is. A Grafana MCP exposing dashboards, queries, alerts, and panels.
Why install it. Read-only access to your existing dashboards, plus the ability to compose ad-hoc queries.
Depth. Medium.
Watch out for. Datasource auth. Grafana brokers many backends. The MCP inherits whatever auth Grafana has, which can be more or less than you want.
18. Stripe 🟢
What it is. Stripe's MCP for customers, subscriptions, invoices, refunds, and webhooks.
Why install it. Customer-success agents that can actually look up a user's billing state and answer questions, not just route the ticket.
Depth. Deep.
Watch out for. Refunds and payouts are irreversible. Use the consent gate. (How dangerous operations should work.)
Cloud + infrastructure
19. AWS ⚪
What it is. AWS-published MCP exposing EC2, S3, Lambda, IAM, RDS, and most of the bestiary.
Why install it. Infra agents that can inspect, provision, and tear down resources on demand.
Depth. Deep but sprawling. Hundreds of tools.
Watch out for. IAM scope, again. The default install pulls org-wide. Scope down to a single account, single role, and audit every call.
20. Cloudflare 🟢
What it is. Cloudflare's MCP for DNS, Workers, R2, Pages, and the analytics surface.
Why install it. Edge-native agents that ship code to Workers and read traffic patterns from analytics in the same loop.
Depth. Medium. Deeper for Workers than for the rest.
Watch out for. The "purge cache" tool. An agent can purge your entire production cache with one call. Consent gate.
21. Vercel ⚪
What it is. Vercel's MCP for deployments, environment variables, domains, and project settings.
Why install it. Frontend agents that ship to Vercel can verify their own deploys and roll back when they break.
Depth. Medium.
Watch out for. Environment variables. The MCP exposes read access. If your agent's logs go anywhere shared, scrub.
Search + research
22. Brave Search 🟢
What it is. Reference Anthropic-collaborated MCP for the Brave Search API.
Why install it. Cheap, fast, privacy-respecting web search for the agent. The default we install before reaching for anything heavier.
Depth. Shallow. That is fine. Search wants to be one tool.
Watch out for. Result quality on niche technical topics is lower than Google. Pair with Exa for technical depth.
23. Exa ⚪
What it is. Semantic search MCP designed for agents, with neural ranking and content extraction in one call.
Why install it. Research-heavy agents that need both "find the page" and "give me the relevant excerpt" without two round trips.
Depth. Medium.
Watch out for. Cost per call is higher than Brave. Use it for the harder queries.
24. Anthropic Web Search ⚪
What it is. Anthropic's official web search MCP, free for Claude users.
Why install it. Convenience. If you are running on Claude already and your search needs are basic, this is the path of least friction.
Depth. Shallow.
Watch out for. No real customization. Black-box ranking.
Design
25. Figma 🟢
What it is. Figma's MCP for files, frames, components, and the comments thread.
Why install it. Design-engineering agents that read a Figma frame and translate it into code, or read a code change and update the corresponding frame.
Depth. Medium. Read-heavy. Write support is improving.
Watch out for. Token alignment. The MCP exposes raw shapes. Mapping them to your design system is on the agent.
Models + inference
26. Replicate ⚪
What it is. Replicate's MCP for running open-source models on demand (image gen, audio transcription, embeddings).
Why install it. When your primary agent needs a specialized model on the bench, calling Replicate as an MCP tool is cleaner than embedding model-specific SDKs.
Depth. Shallow but well-shaped.
Watch out for. Cold-start latency on less-popular models. The agent's first call to a sleeping model can take 30+ seconds.
Utilities
27. Memory + Sequential Thinking 🟢
What it is. Two reference MCP servers from Anthropic, often installed together. Memory persists facts the agent has learned across sessions; sequential-thinking gives the agent a scratchpad for chain-of-thought tools.
Why install it. They are the connective tissue. Almost every long-running agent ends up wanting persistent memory and structured thinking, and rolling them yourself is a distraction from the actual work.
Depth. Small surface, deep behavior.
Watch out for. The "memory" server stores things in flat files by default. Production deployments need real persistence. Swap the storage backend before you rely on it.
What separates a good MCP server from a bad one
After installing dozens, the pattern is consistent. Good MCP servers have these five properties. Bad ones have one or two.
If a server fails three of these, treat it as a feature for evaluation, not for production use.
What we install on a fresh agent
For a brand-new agent on Dock, the default install is six MCPs:
- Dock (the workspace itself)
- GitHub (code)
- Filesystem (local scratch)
- Brave Search (general web)
- Memory + Sequential Thinking (persistence + thinking)
- Stripe or Linear, depending on what the agent's job is
That covers ~80% of agent-shaped intent in the first hour. Everything else from the list above gets added when a specific use case calls for it.
FAQ
What is an MCP server?
An MCP server is a process that speaks the Model Context Protocol over stdio or HTTP. It exposes three things to the agent: tools (callable functions), resources (read-only data), and prompts (templates). The agent connects, lists what is available, and calls.
How do I install an MCP server?
Most clients (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, Dock's agent harness) accept a JSON config block per server: command to run, arguments, environment variables. Install the package, drop the block in, restart the client. The official directory at mcp.so lists install snippets for most of the servers above.
What is the difference between an MCP server and a plugin?
Plugins ship inside one client. MCP servers run as separate processes and can be reused across clients. Cursor, Claude, Windsurf, and Dock all consume the same Linear MCP server, for example. Plugins are vendor-locked; MCP is portable.
Are all MCP servers safe to install?
No. An MCP server runs locally with whatever permissions you start it with. A malicious server can read files, exfiltrate credentials, or call out to an attacker's domain. Treat MCP servers like any other dependency: install from sources you trust, scope credentials tight, and audit network egress.
Can I run my own MCP server?
Yes. The protocol is open and the SDKs (TypeScript, Python, Go, Rust) are all under 200 lines for a hello-world server. If you have an internal API your agents need, an MCP wrapper is usually the right move. Aim for the five properties above; do not just CRUD-wrap the REST.
Which MCP server should I install first?
If you are starting from zero, pick the workspace your team already uses (Dock, Linear, Notion, GitHub, depending) plus a search MCP plus filesystem. Three servers gets you most of the value. Add more as specific gaps show up.
Are workspace MCP servers all the same?
No. The differences are huge. We covered the architectural reasons in Why we built an MCP-first workspace. Short version: MCP-first products design their tool catalog for agent intent. MCP-bolted-on products wrap their REST API one-to-one and miss the affordances agents actually need.
Closing
The Model Context Protocol is one of the few things in 2026 that genuinely lowers the cost of running agents on real systems. The list above is the live snapshot of what is worth installing right now. We update it as the directory changes and the depth ratings shift.
If you are building an MCP server, the design decisions Dock made are documented here. If you want to see one running, Dock's MCP is at /api/mcp. If you want a workspace where the agents you install are first-class members alongside your team, try Dock free.
The model layer wins when the tool catalog is good. The tool catalog is good when each MCP server is designed for what an agent actually does, not for what an API documentation page describes.
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