An advisory guide for analyzing and improving an MCP server. MCP is a standard way for AI assistants to call tools that connect to other software.

Use it to discuss trace performance, evaluation failures, repeated tool calls, composite tools, proxy tools, and what to build next.

It helps explain why tool use may be slow, costly, unreliable, or confusing for an AI assistant. It also helps decide whether tool chains or combined tools would improve the design.

discuss-mcp — Skill for Claude Code by umbraco/Umbraco-MCP-Base

Install

Getting it into your agent

This one installs as part of its plugin. Adding the marketplace and installing the plugin brings it with everything else the plugin ships.

Claude Code

/plugin marketplace add umbraco/Umbraco-MCP-Base

Claude Code

/plugin install umbraco-mcp-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install umbraco-mcp-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 13 skills, 7 agents.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/umbraco/umbraco-mcp-base/discuss-mcp/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/umbraco/umbraco-mcp-base/discuss-mcp)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/umbraco/umbraco-mcp-base/discuss-mcp"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/umbraco/umbraco-mcp-base/discuss-mcp/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/umbraco/umbraco-mcp-base/discuss-mcp"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/umbraco/umbraco-mcp-base/discuss-mcp.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 30 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 1,039 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00030	$0.01039
Opus 5.5	$0.00012	$0.00416
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00006	$0.00208
Haiku 4.5	$0.00003	$0.00104

Measured 2mo ago against content hash 58ef15c5a3d6, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

discuss-mcp 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 2mo ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 2 executable files (scripts/analyze-traces.ts, scripts/list-chained-tools.ts), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

plugins/umbraco-mcp-skills/skills/discuss-mcp/SKILL.md · 72 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 72 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Discuss MCP

Advisory skill for reflecting on and improving an MCP server. Unlike builder skills (/build-tools, /build-evals) that execute generation workflows, this skill is conversational — it helps developers understand what to improve, why, and how.

When to Use

Use this skill when the developer asks:

"How can I improve my MCP server?"
"Why are my evals slow/expensive/failing?"
"Should I add composite tools or proxy tools?"
"What tools am I missing?"
"What should I build next?"
"Are my tools well-designed?"
"How do I reduce eval cost/turns?"

Improvement Paths

Route to the appropriate sub-file based on what the developer wants to discuss:

1. Trace Optimization — "My evals are slow/expensive/failing"

The developer wants to analyze eval performance and iteratively improve tools based on trace data.

Read: trace-optimization.md

Signals: mentions evals, traces, cost, turns, tokens, performance, "why does the LLM struggle", repeated tool calls, wrong tool selection.

2. Chained Tool Design — "Should I add composite/proxy tools?"

The developer wants to discuss adding tools that delegate to other MCP servers — whether to proxy or create composites.

Read: chained-tools.md

Signals: mentions chaining, proxy, composite, multi-server, delegation, orchestration, combining data from multiple sources.

3. Behavioral Analysis — "What should I build next?"

The developer wants a holistic review of their MCP: coverage gaps, organizational quality, prioritization of next steps.

Read: behavioral-analysis.md

Signals: mentions coverage, gaps, what's missing, next steps, priorities, tool organization, modes, slices, "are my tools well-designed".

Conversational Guidelines

When advising on MCP improvements, follow these principles:

Ask before recommending. Understand the developer's goals before suggesting changes. "What workflows are you trying to support?" is more useful than jumping to solutions.

Read the full file on GitHub · 72 lines

Files

What ships with it

5 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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.

2mo ago First seen · 72 lines · 30 tokens per session scan A 58ef15c5a3d6

Subscribe to this mod's changes

discuss-mcp is a skill published in the GitHub repository umbraco/Umbraco-MCP-Base (2 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 30 tokens to every session and 1,039 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-08-31.

Building agents

discuss-mcp next to 6 skills from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
discuss-mcpumbraco/Umbraco-MCP-Base	Skill	2	yesterday	MIT	A	30	Claude Code
imagegenopenai/codex	Skill	135k	today	Apache-2.0	A	113	Codex
playwright-climicrosoft/playwright	Skill	100k	today	Apache-2.0	A	19	Claude Code
browser-automationopenclaw/openclaw	Skill	394k	today	MIT	A	36	Claude Code
local-ai-agentsmicrosoft/ai-agents-for-beginners	Skill	80k	6d ago	MIT	A	200	Claude Code, Codex
next-cache-components-adoptionvercel/next.js	Skill	143k	today	MIT	A	95	Claude Code
chat-pet-sprite-creationmicrosoft/vscode	Skill	195k	today	MIT	A	53	Claude Code, Codex