Open Knowledgebase

A zero-database MCP knowledgebase template for Vercel.

Use it to expose static Markdown content to AI agents through clean MCP surfaces. A surface is just a named content namespace with its own MCP endpoint, metadata, tools, search scope, resources, and optional provider integrations.

• Documentation, research, team knowledge, portfolio memory, client context, runbooks, or any other structured Markdown corpus.
• Multiple surfaces from one deploy, for example docs, research, projects, or the shipped example surfaces technology and projects.
• Skill catalogs with when_to_use guidance.
• Build-time MiniSearch retrieval.
• Optional provider-backed integrations behind content metadata.
• Optional passthrough tools, such as write_content, for deployment-level capabilities that proxy a configured external service.

The default deployment needs no database and no paid provider. Content is committed as Markdown, indexed at build time, and bundled with the Next.js MCP routes.

Quick Start

pnpm install
pnpm validate
pnpm build
pnpm dev

Set a local API key:

cp .env.example .env.local

Then connect an MCP client to:

• http://localhost:3000/api/mcp/technology
• http://localhost:3000/api/mcp/projects

Those are example surfaces from the starter content. Add or rename top-level folders under content/ to create your own surface names.

Use Authorization: Bearer <MCP_API_KEY> where the client supports headers.

Clients without header support can use ?api_key=<MCP_API_KEY> only when MCP_ALLOW_QUERY_API_KEY=true. Keep that fallback disabled for production unless you explicitly need it for a known connector.

Claude.ai custom connectors without OAuth are one known case: add the connector with /api/mcp/<surface>?api_key=<MCP_API_KEY> after enabling MCP_ALLOW_QUERY_API_KEY=true. See MCP client examples.

MCP Metadata

The server returns MCP implementation metadata during initialization:

• MCP_SERVER_SLUG controls the stable machine-readable serverInfo.name.
• MCP_SERVER_NAME controls the human-readable base title.
• MCP_PUBLIC_URL / MCP_WEBSITE_URL populate serverInfo.websiteUrl.
• MCP_ICON_URL, MCP_ICON_MIME_TYPE, MCP_ICON_SIZES, and MCP_ICON_THEME configure client icons where supported.

Deployment Modes

Enable one or more surfaces with:

MCP_ENABLED_SURFACES=technology,projects

The valid values are discovered from top-level content/<surface>/_meta.yaml files. Single-surface downstreams are useful when you want stricter separation:

MCP_ENABLED_SURFACES=technology

MCP_ENABLED_SURFACES=projects

If MCP_ENABLED_SURFACES is unset, every discovered surface is enabled. If it is set, only recognized values are enabled; invalid or empty configured values expose no surfaces.

Commands

pnpm dev          # Next.js dev server
pnpm build        # Build indices, then build Next.js
pnpm test         # Node test suite
pnpm typecheck    # TypeScript
pnpm lint         # Biome
pnpm validate     # Content schema validation
pnpm stdio        # Local stdio MCP, defaults to the first enabled surface
pnpm inspect:stdio # Launch MCP Inspector against the stdio server
pnpm sync:list    # List sync sources
pnpm sync:free    # Run free sync sources

Protocol Safety

The stdio entrypoint keeps stdout protocol-clean. Runtime diagnostics go to stderr so local MCP clients do not receive non-JSON-RPC log lines on stdout.

Vercel Deploy

Deploy with Vercel

Set MCP_API_KEY during setup and connect clients to /api/mcp/<surface>.

Passthrough tools are disabled unless both the surface declares the tool and the deployment enables it. For example, a surface with passthrough_tools: [write_content] exposes the writer only when MCP_ENABLE_WRITE_CONTENT=true and AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY is configured.

Security

Production deployments should use Authorization: Bearer <MCP_API_KEY>. Query-string API keys are an opt-in compatibility fallback only. This template does not implement OAuth; see Security before claiming OAuth compliance in a downstream deployment.

Example content is synthetic fixture content. Keep private memory, secrets, provider identifiers, and personal deployment domains in downstream forks.

Operational endpoints:

• GET /api/health
• GET /api/build-info

Documentation

• Architecture
• Content model
• MCP tool reference
• Vercel deployment
• Security
• MCP Inspector validation
• MCP client examples
• Provider integrations
• Passthrough tools
• Provider/platform validation notes
• Observability and logging
• Sync sources
• Downstream deployments
• Deployment model decision
• Storage adapter notes
• Operations runbook
• Registry readiness

License

MIT.