Relationship to MCP Server Card (SEP-1649)

[Fannon]

I noticed that this was proposed recently in the MCP repository: modelcontextprotocol/modelcontextprotocol#1649

Are you aware of this? I wonder how this proposal relates to the MCP Server Card idea and the MCP Registry server.json specification / schema.

Thanks for pushing the discovery topic forward. I'm involved in this from SAP side and would like to get this forward, too. Let us know what could help or what open questions there are.

[nickcoai]

My take is that the SEP-1649 card schema is what should replace the bulk of the Registry server.json, and be the initial candidate for the "service" field in the AI Card spec.

i.e. it's the description of an MCP service, and the AI Card / Registry are in-effect distribution mechanisms for it.

[electrocucaracha]

From my understanding, the server.json file provides MCP metadata used for installing or registering servers (i.e., how to use it), while SEP-1649 defines MCP metadata describing what the server offers before any session begins (i.e., what it provides).

[Fannon]

Yes that's also my understanding so far.

AI Card is a shared discovery mechanism between those two protocols (btw. I work on https://open-resource-discovery.github.io/specification/, which already does this). But to make this possible, we also need an MCP Server Card format (like A2A Agent Cards) which are fully self-contained and describe an MCP Server fully in a single file.

Probably it's reasonable to use MCP Server Card to both describe how to install local MCP servers and how to access remote MCP Servers - important is that it's not just how to install / connect, but that we also get all the relevant metadata before we have installed or have access.