Generic APM tools couldn't tell me why my MCP tool calls were failing, so I built something that actually understands the protocol

Description and use

mcpobs turns generic HTTP tracing into detailed MCP diagnostics, categorizing failures and tracking long‑running calls.

Problem

APM tools treated MCP tool calls as generic HTTP, providing only latency and status, making it impossible to diagnose failures such as missing tools, argument validation errors, or expected 401 auth handshakes.

Outcome

mcpobs transforms generic HTTP tracing into meaningful MCP-specific diagnostics, improving developer productivity and reducing debugging time.

Workflow

• Install mcpobs via pip: pip install mcpobs
• Import and instrument your MCP client: from mcpobs import instrument; instrument(mcp)
• Run your application; mcpobs automatically classifies failures and tracks progress

Evidence

Drop it into your server (pip install mcpobs, then instrument(mcp)) and it classifies failures into categories that map to an actual fix, tracks progress on long-running tools while they're still running, and shows the downstream db/http/llm calls in the same trace.

Source