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Stack Gems MCP Server

by stackgems Your server? Claim it
answering

Stack Gems is answering right now. Last checked 12 min ago. It exposes 5 tools.

Read-only search of 900+ reviewed developer tools, each with a verdict and caveats. Free/OSS first.

Uptime history 20 days of history
20 days agonow
100.0%
Uptime 24h
91 of 91 checks
5
Tools
read from the server
284 ms
Response time
average over 24h
open, no key
Access
streamable-http

Nothing serious here today

Today is the operative word: we check Stack Gems every 15 minutes and re-read its code on every release. Watch it and you find out the day that stops being true.

Three servers free · no card

Connect this server

Endpoint below is the one we actually reach during checks — not the one copied from a README. Last verified 12 min ago.

run in your terminal
claude mcp add catalog --transport http https://stackgems.com/api/mcp
Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, then paste this address
https://stackgems.com/api/mcp
~/.codex/config.toml
[mcp_servers.catalog]
url = "https://stackgems.com/api/mcp"
.cursor/mcp.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "catalog": {
      "url": "https://stackgems.com/api/mcp"
    }
  }
}
.vscode/mcp.json
{
  "servers": {
    "catalog": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://stackgems.com/api/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Available tools 5

Read directly from the server with tools/list, grouped by what they act on. If a tool disappears, we record the date.

alternatives
get_alternatives
Free and open-source alternatives to a tool from the same category, with verdict and Catch. Works for any slug in the catalog.
best
best_for
Ranked shortlist for a use case or category (e.g. "vector database", "coding agents", "auth", "mcp"), free and open source first, each with verdict and Catch. Falls back to search when no list matches.
categories
list_categories
The catalog vocabulary: stacks (categories), best-of lists with counts, and the tag vocabulary with counts. Use the slugs as filters in search_gems.
gem
get_gem
Full Stack Gems review of one tool by slug: what is good, the Catch, verdict, license, repo health, plus links to its best-of list and alternatives.
gems
search_gems
Search the Stack Gems catalog of reviewed developer tools. Matches name, tagline, verdict, Catch, subcategory and tags. Filters combine with AND. Returns verdict and the first sentence of the Catch for each hit.

Endpoints

URLTransportStateLatencyChecked
https://stackgems.com/api/mcp streamable-http answering 273 ms 12 min ago

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Stack Gems — questions

Answers built from our own checks of this server.

What can Stack Gems do?
It exposes 5 tools, read directly from the server on our last check. Among them: best_for, get_alternatives, get_gem, list_categories, search_gems. The full list with descriptions is on this page — we take it from the server itself via tools/list, not from a README. How MCP servers expose tools in the first place →
Is Stack Gems working right now?
We send a real MCP handshake every 15 minutes. Over the last 24 hours 91 of 91 checks got a reply (100.0%), average response time 284 ms. The bar chart above shows every period we have measured.
How do I connect Stack Gems?
Copy the ready config from this page. We generate it for Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, Cursor and VS Code, each in the form that client actually reads. It is a remote server, so there is nothing to install — the client connects to the address.
Does Stack Gems need an API key?
No. Stack Gems completed a full MCP handshake with us as an anonymous client and listed its tools without asking for anything. All 5 of them are readable on this page. This is what we observed, not what the docs claim.
How fast is Stack Gems?
It answers our handshake in 284 ms on average, which is faster than 49% of all working MCP servers we measure. The comparison comes from our own checks across the whole registry, every 15 minutes.