MCP server list: 7 servers tested by actually launching them

Each of these was launched with npx, sent initialize, and replied with a tools/list that named itself and counted its own tools. The tool names below are copied from those replies, not from documentation.

The tool count tracks what each server is for rather than how good it is. Playwright reports 24 tools because full browser control needs that many verbs; sequential-thinking reports exactly one because it does one thing. server-everything is a test/reference server, which is why its tools are things like echo and get-sum rather than anything production-shaped.

@modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem — secure-filesystem-server v0.2.0 — 14 tools
  read_file, read_text_file, read_media_file, read_multiple_files, write_file,
  edit_file, create_directory, list_directory, list_directory_with_sizes,
  directory_tree, move_file, search_files, get_file_info, list_allowed_directories

@playwright/mcp — Playwright v1.63.0-alpha-2026-08-31 — 24 tools
  browser_close, browser_resize, browser_console_messages, browser_handle_dialog,
  browser_evaluate, browser_file_upload, browser_drop, browser_find, browser_fill_form,
  browser_press_key, browser_type, browser_navigate, browser_navigate_back,
  browser_network_requests, browser_network_request, browser_run_code_unsafe,
  browser_take_screenshot, browser_snapshot, browser_click, browser_drag, browser_hover,
  browser_select_option, browser_tabs, browser_wait_for

@modelcontextprotocol/server-github — github-mcp-server v0.6.2 — 26 tools
  create_or_update_file, search_repositories, create_repository, get_file_contents,
  push_files, create_issue, create_pull_request, fork_repository, create_branch,
  list_commits, list_issues, update_issue, add_issue_comment, search_code, search_issues,
  search_users, get_issue, get_pull_request, list_pull_requests, create_pull_request_review,
  merge_pull_request, get_pull_request_files, get_pull_request_status,
  update_pull_request_branch, get_pull_request_comments, get_pull_request_reviews

@modelcontextprotocol/server-everything — mcp-servers/everything v2.0.0 — 12 tools
  echo, get-annotated-message, get-env, get-resource-links, get-resource-reference,
  get-structured-content, get-sum, get-tiny-image, gzip-file-as-resource,
  toggle-simulated-logging, toggle-subscriber-updates, trigger-long-running-operation

@modelcontextprotocol/server-memory — memory-server v0.6.3 — 9 tools
  create_entities, create_relations, add_observations, delete_entities,
  delete_observations, delete_relations, read_graph, search_nodes, open_nodes

@upstash/context7-mcp — Context7 v4.0.5 — 2 tools
  resolve-library-id, query-docs

@modelcontextprotocol/server-sequential-thinking — sequential-thinking-server v2026.8.31 — 1 tool
  sequentialthinking

Running npm view <package> deprecated version against the official server packages turned up four marked deprecated and four still current as of 2026.8.31. The four deprecated packages are exactly the four that "awesome MCP" lists and setup blog posts most often recommend, and none of their deprecation notices name a replacement package.

Deprecated (npm view … deprecated returns a message)
  @modelcontextprotocol/server-postgres       0.6.2  "Package no longer supported"
  @modelcontextprotocol/server-puppeteer      0.6.2  deprecated
  @modelcontextprotocol/server-github          0.6.2  deprecated
  @modelcontextprotocol/server-brave-search   0.6.2  deprecated

Current (no deprecation flag, latest version 2026.8.31)
  @modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem
  @modelcontextprotocol/server-memory
  @modelcontextprotocol/server-sequential-thinking
  @modelcontextprotocol/server-everything

server-github is on the deprecated list above, and it still started cleanly and reported 26 working tools, listed in full in the first section. So "deprecated" here does not mean the package fails to run. It means the maintainers have stopped fixing it: no bug fixes, no new tools, no security patches going forward. A list that only checks "does it start" will keep recommending these four for years after the npm page told anyone who looked that maintenance had stopped.

These were launched the same way, with npx and no arguments and no credentials, and given 50 seconds. None sent an initialize response, so no tool list could be read from any of them this way.

The record stops at that observation on purpose. Two of the five printed a deprecation warning to stderr and three printed nothing at all, but the reason each one stayed silent — a required argument, a missing credential, something else entirely — was not tested here, so this article states only that they produced no tool list without arguments, and does not guess why.

@modelcontextprotocol/server-postgres      (stderr: deprecation warning only)
@modelcontextprotocol/server-puppeteer     (no stderr)
@modelcontextprotocol/server-brave-search  (stderr: deprecation warning only)
firecrawl-mcp                              (no stderr)
@notionhq/notion-mcp-server                (no stderr)

With a 10-second wait, three servers — sequential-thinking, everything and context7 — did not answer at all. Raising the wait to 45 seconds, all three answered normally. The delay is npx downloading the package for the first time, not a broken server. A client with a short connection timeout will see these as failed or dead servers on the very first connection, and the fix is to run the server once beforehand so npm's cache is warm, not to give up on the package.

Once cached, the same servers responded in a few seconds each: memory in about 2,994ms, sequential-thinking about 3,665ms, context7 about 3,946ms, measured from process start to the initialize-plus-tools/list round trip finishing.

server-filesystem has no --help flag. Running npx -y @modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem --help makes it treat --help as a directory path: it prints "Cannot access directory C:\...\--help, skipping" and, since no accessible directory was given, ends with "Error: None of the specified directories are accessible." Every argument to this server is a directory to allow access to — there is no separate help mode.

mcp-server-time cannot be installed through npx at all: npm fails with npm error code ENOVERSIONS because the package is not published to npm — its official distribution is through Python, not npm. Any list that says "every official MCP server runs with npx" is stating something this run disproves.

The official server collection, Playwright MCP and Context7 are maintained at the repositories below. Version numbers were also inconsistent across these servers — from v0.2.0 on filesystem to date-based v2026.8.31 on sequential-thinking and everything, to a v1.63.0-alpha-2026-08-31 prerelease tag on Playwright — so version format alone is not a sign of maturity.

Official servers: https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/servers
Playwright MCP:   https://github.com/microsoft/playwright-mcp
Context7:         https://github.com/upstash/context7