Blog
Notes from the Unyly team
Dissecting the MCP ecosystem, sharing engineering details, guides for creators.
- ·guide
MCP Server Not Showing Up in Claude — How to Fix (2026)
Installed an MCP server but it never shows up in Claude Desktop or Claude Code? Nine times out of ten it is one of five things. Here is the checklist.
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- ·guide
MCP Config Errors: Fixing claude_desktop_config.json Mistakes
Trailing commas, wrong paths, forgotten env blocks — the five config mistakes that break MCP servers, with the exact correct shape.
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- ·guide
MCP Tool Limit: How Many Servers Is Too Many?
Every MCP server adds its tools to the model context. Past a point, accuracy drops and latency rises. Here is the practical ceiling and how to get past it.
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- ·ecosystem
Best MCP Server Directories in 2026: Unyly vs Smithery vs mcp.so vs Glama vs PulseMCP
A side-by-side of the five main MCP directories — catalog size, one-click install, gateway, and hosting — so you can pick the right one.
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- ·ecosystem
Smithery Alternatives in 2026
Looking for a Smithery alternative with a bigger catalog, real one-click install, or a gateway? Here are the options and when each fits.
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- ·guide
What Is an MCP Server? A Plain-English Guide (2026)
An MCP server is a small program that gives an AI assistant a set of tools — read a database, send a message, call an API — over one open protocol. Here is the whole idea in five minutes.
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- ·engineering
Remote vs Local (stdio) MCP Servers — Which to Use
Local MCP servers run on your machine via npx/uvx; remote ones run in the cloud over HTTP. Each wins in different cases — here is the decision.
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- ·engineering
Why Your MCP Server Is Slow (and How to Fix Latency)
Slow MCP tool calls usually trace to cold npx starts, too many tools in context, or a chatty remote server. Four fixes.
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- ·announcement
Unyly Gateway: install one connector, use the whole catalog
Stop wiring MCPs one by one. Connect the Unyly Gateway once and every server in the catalog is a search away — pinned ones show up as tools directly.
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- ·announcement
Sell your MCP: a marketplace with an 80/20 split
Authors can now charge for their MCP — per install or per call. The buyer pays from a wallet, you keep 80%, Unyly takes 20%. Free MCPs stay free and one-click.
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- ·engineering
Real OAuth for MCP: how "Authorize" replaces pasting tokens
claude.ai and ChatGPT expect an OAuth flow, not a token in the URL. Here is the small OAuth 2.1 server we built for the gateway — discovery, dynamic client registration, PKCE.
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- ·guide
How to connect an MCP server to ChatGPT
ChatGPT supports custom MCP connectors. Here is the exact flow — and the one dropdown that trips everyone up.
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- ·guide
AEO: get your product named by ChatGPT and Perplexity
Answer Engine Optimization is SEO for AI answers. The goal is not a Google rank — it is being the product an AI recommends. Here is what actually moves the needle.
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- ·ecosystem
MCP servers vs Claude Skills: when to use which
Skills and MCP servers both extend an AI assistant, but they solve different problems. A short, practical split.
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- ·guide
Build a research stack with MCP
Five servers that turn Claude into a research assistant that searches, reads, and files findings into your notes.
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- ·guide
A sales / SDR stack on MCP
Research an account, draft the outreach, log it in the CRM — without leaving the chat. The four servers that make it work.
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- ·guide
Remote (HTTP) vs stdio MCP: which to pick
The same MCP can ship as a local process or a hosted endpoint. The choice changes auth, sharing, and which clients can use it.
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- ·announcement
Per-install or per-call: pricing models for paid MCPs
Two ways to charge for an MCP, two very different revenue shapes. A quick guide to picking the right one.
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- ·announcement
Vault: an MCP-aware second brain
Markdown notes with wiki-links, in the cloud, that your AI assistant can read and write through MCP. Your knowledge base becomes a tool.
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- ·announcement
Boards: a kanban Claude can run for you
Trello + Notion, with invites, covers, and checklists — plus an MCP interface so your assistant can create and move cards from chat.
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- ·guide
How we security-scan 51,000 MCPs without AI
A catalog this size can't be reviewed by hand, and we don't trust an LLM to gate installs. Here is the deterministic scan that runs on every server.
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- ·guide
Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, or Claude Code — pick your MCP client
They all speak MCP, but the install path and best use case differ. A quick decision guide.
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- ·ecosystem
State of AEO 2026: how AI answer engines pick products
A growing share of buying decisions starts with "ask the AI". Here is what we see about how ChatGPT, Perplexity and friends decide what to name.
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- ·engineering
Sael vs MCP: we benchmarked the protocol — −89% round-trips
Numbers, not adjectives. We put the Sael reference server head-to-head with a spec-correct MCP server — same tools, same dataset, same transport. Here is what the protocol shape actually costs.
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- ·announcement
Credits, not seats: usage pricing for the agent era
Seat-based pricing made sense when humans clicked buttons. Agents do not. We moved Unyly to a unified credit model — and baked the Sael efficiency advantage straight into the price.
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- ·announcement
Quark is now Sael
We renamed our protocol. Same streaming-first design, same goals, a name that does not collide with a dozen other things called Quark. Here is what Sael is and why it exists.
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- ·engineering
Typography v2: Tektur, fluid type, and pixel craft
A catalog of 51,000 servers is a wall of text. We rebuilt the type system around a display font with Cyrillic support, fluid sizing, and a consistent pixel-art language.
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- ·ecosystem
State of MCP 2026: 51,000+ Servers, Hosted Runners, and the Sael Successor
Where the Model Context Protocol ecosystem stands in mid-2026. Catalog size, client adoption, security, and what comes next.
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- ·ecosystem
Why we indexed 11,000 MCP servers — and what we learned
The MCP ecosystem grew from 200 servers to 11,000 in 18 months. We crawled npm, the official registry, PulseMCP, and Smithery — here is what surprised us.
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- ·engineering
One-click install for Claude, Cursor, and Cline — the architecture
We write four config files in three different formats. Here is how a single Install button covers Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, and Cline without breaking existing setups.
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- ·guide
MCP server security: a checklist for authors
Your MCP runs inside the user's Claude session with access to their credentials. Here is the security review we run on every Verified server, written so you can audit yours first.
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- ·announcement
Roadmap: what is next for Unyly
Hosted MCPs, programmatic SEO, IDE extensions, and more. The honest, dated roadmap of what we ship next.
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