preview

A browser-based test page for MCP servers that return widgets, meaning small pieces of interactive web UI. It imitates the runtime used by ChatGPT Apps and can reload widget files during development.

In plain words
What is it for?
Previewing widgets, selecting a tool to test, switching light or dark themes and locales, and developing from local widget files.
Why use it?
It lets you check a server’s visual output in a browser before integrating it into the target application.

Command

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add commands/paiml/rust-mcp-sdk/preview
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/paiml/rust-mcp-sdk
Per session 0 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 396 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00000 $0.00396
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00198
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00079
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00040

Measured 3d ago against content hash 919f57001257, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

preview scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 3d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

cargo-pmcp/docs/commands/preview.md · 50 lines

What it actually says

cargo pmcp preview

Preview MCP Apps widgets in a browser.

Usage

cargo pmcp preview --url <URL> [OPTIONS]

Description

Launches a browser-based preview environment for testing MCP servers that return widget UI. Simulates the ChatGPT Apps runtime with dual proxy/WASM bridge modes.

When --widgets-dir is set, widget HTML files are read directly from disk on each request, enabling hot-reload during development (just refresh the browser).

Options

Option Default Description
--url <URL> (required) URL of the running MCP server
--port <PORT> 8765 Port for the preview server
--open - Open browser automatically
--tool <TOOL> - Auto-select this tool on start
--theme <THEME> light Initial theme (light or dark)
--locale <LOCALE> en-US Initial locale
--widgets-dir <DIR> - Path to widgets directory for file-based authoring (hot-reload)

Examples

Basic preview with auto-open:

cargo pmcp preview --url http://localhost:3000 --open

File-based widget authoring with hot-reload:

cargo pmcp preview --url http://localhost:3000 --widgets-dir ./widgets --open

Dark theme, auto-select a specific tool:

cargo pmcp preview --url http://localhost:3000 --theme dark --tool chess_board
Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 3d ago First seen · 50 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 919f57001257

Subscribe to this mod's changes

preview is a command published in the GitHub repository paiml/rust-mcp-sdk (53 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 396 tokens. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.