S-Tier MCP Servers for Developers

Welcome to Syntax. Today we're going to

be talking about S tier

MCP servers for developers. These are

going to be MCP servers that work really

well in general development flows to

help you build stuff, to make things, to

vibe code, any of that. And by no means

is this an exhaustive list or anything

like that, but these are a handful of

MCP servers that I've used personally

that I have really enjoyed and that have

made my time working in code a lot

better with agents. My name is Scott

Tolinsky. I'm a developer from Denver.

With me as always is Wes Boss. What's

up Wes?

>> Hey, stoked to talk about this. Feels

like we've had a bazillion MCP episodes,

but there's just like this never ending

well of stuff to talk about, especially

now like OpenAI just announced a whole

bunch of their agents SDK. We'll have a

show on that, but it's it's never

ending.

>> Yes, it's never ending. And one thing

that I've personally felt is that like

yes, MCP to me always seemed like an

interesting idea, something that could

be really advantageous to to use, but we

have sort of reached a point where MCP

servers are doing so much and so many

good things. they've gotten really good

that I I'm finding their utility to be

more and more uh something that I rely

on every single day when I am using

agents to code. I actually we should

have Kent Cods on the show. He's been

doing a ton with MCP servers and he and

I chatted a whole bunch at the the VS

Code Insider Summit about MCP and his

his thoughts on MCP overall had like

really uh shaped how much I've dove into

adding these tools into my workflow uh

lately and it has really paid off. Um so

before we get going, let's talk about

Sentry. This show is presented by Sentry

uh sentry.io/sintex.

Sign up again 2 months for free. What is

Sentry? It's the perfect place to fix

your bugs. Uh, make sure your

application's running smooth. I'm going

to talk about a newer MCP server that

they released recently beyond the just

the already awesome Sentry MCP server

that is like awesome S tier development

tool. So, that that's not even going to

be part of this sponsor read, right?

That's going to be part of the normal

episode because it's that good.

>> It's just good. Yeah,

>> it's just good. And uh I I more and more

rely on Century's tools to uh fix my

stuff, man. Seir is their AI thing that

that goes through and finds the root

cause of your bugs. And I've had just

such good luck using that thing. So

check it out. century.io/sintax.

Sign up two months for free. Tasty

treat. All right, real quick before we

get going. Two things. We need your web

development horror stories and we got a

meet up in San Francisco on October

27th. So, if you have a horror story for

our yearly Halloween episode where we

tell stories of people who have you

dropped the database by accident, you

deployed a fix that DDoSed yourself, you

wrote a bad React hook, you accidentally

forgot the wear clause in a database

>> about the clause.

>> Oh man, these stories are awful. I want

to stick my head like I'm so stressed

out reading these stories every year,

but it's so enjoyable. Please, please

send them to us. Go to syntaxfm/spooky,

submit your story or send me an email

westboss.com.

Send me a DM wherever. We would love to

read it. We make everything anonymous.

We're not going to say who you are. Um

but we'd love to read them off. And then

also October 27 in San Francisco, we are

doing a meetup and we want to invite

you. Uh we are at Bear Bottle Brewing in

San Francisco. Go to syntax.fm/ fm/meup.

You can grab some tickets. We're going

to have some merch there. We're going to

have some Brussis there. We're going to

have Scott there, myself, CJ, the whole

team. It's going to be a hoot. So, come

on down.

[Music]

This is the end. End of ad read. Let's

talk about S tier MCP servers. Now, the

first one that I have on here is the

Sentry MCP server. Um, the Sentry MCP

server is great because you're if you

use Century, which is again for tracking

errors and all that stuff, you want to

be able to integrate and uh use this

tool to use your Sentry from your agent,

from your CLI in terms of like cloud

code, whatever you're using. Um, all

these examples that I'm showing you on

screen today will be done with claude

code, but if you cannot see, you're

listening on an audio, you're not

missing anything. Um, we're mostly just

kind of showing what they they how they

work. So, um, and we should say before

you even get into that, for anybody who

who hasn't heard, these these MCP

servers are a way to surface additional

tools to

AI. And that could be coding, right, via

cloud code or or VS code or cursor. It

could be via via chat, a chat app. And

it could be by simply making straight up

API calls to a like open AI or or

anthropic, but you provided additional

tools to do things that it it it might

not be able to do. It might not be able

to access specific things.

>> Yeah, you're providing the AI with

specific tools to do specific things.

So, I I've loaded up the Sentry MCP and

I've looked at the tools. There's 19

tools available from find teams, find

releases, get issue details, get trace

details. You can create a team through

this. You can create a project, you can

update a project. So what that means is

that often times when you are in the

past, you're working with century or any

of these types of services like this,

what do you do? You go to their website,

you create a new product project, you

maybe you get an API key or a DSN in

Sentry's uh case and then you run

through the wizards or you Sentry has a

CLI that does it for most platforms and

the docs are great, but you're going

through and you're copy and pasting

stuff from docs. You're getting set up.

You're having to click around. Um with

this, you can create a project directly

from here. After that project is here,

you can then search through issues. you

can analyze issues with their SER AI

platform to help fix them. Um, and

ultimately what that means is that

you're spending less time leaving your

tools, which is cloud code, your editor,

whatever, anywhere that you're using

this MCP server, VS Code, Cursor, or

whatever, you're you're spending less

time leaving that to go to Century's UI

to do things and more time just staying

where you are. um as somebody who's

allergic to con context switching like

that um it's made a big impact for me.

So that is the Century one because again

we use those tools for me. This this

works so well. But they also released a

a newer MCP server which is the

SpotlightJS. Um spotlightjs.com.

Basically this is like a local

development tool where like Sentry

primarily I'm using it mostly for

production bugs and things like that.

Where Spotlight is something that's

collecting your errors. The MCP server

in regards to this allows you again

you're getting local errors, you're

getting local logs, traces, get events

for traces. And this is still brand new,

but if you're working in local

debugging, I know me personally, I'm

often times having the MCP server or uh

the the agent having to run the process

to then read the console to then or

maybe even look into Chrome Dev Tools

MCP to read the the console logs where

this copy pasting it like a sucker and

then there's no additional context. on

top of that in terms of like how often

did it happen, what's the most common

error. Um, yeah, this is awesome.

>> Yeah. So, if you have this set up, you

could say, you know, read this error,

whatever, and you'd be able to get that

error directly from the MCP server

without having to,

you know, instantiate other tools or or,

you know, run additional process. So,

I've really like this. And on top of

that, there's also like this spotlight

UI that you get. Um, so it's not just an

MCP server. There's also this UI for

being able to debug your app. So, uh,

this has become a

>> like a local sentry.

>> It's a local sentry for sure. And I I've

really really liked this. Uh, and

they're working on it pretty hard cuz,

um, I gave them some feedback on the

install process and sure enough, this

landing page has changed since I've done

that. So, uh, shout out to the Century

team for knocking this thing out of the

park. Um, can I talk about the 11 Labs

SDK um or the 11 Labs MCP real quickly?

This is not necessarily something that

you'll do, but if you are the type of

person who's like, I don't really see

the the po the point. I don't really see

the purpose in this type of thing. What

I did is I took the 11 Labs MCP server,

which 11 Labs does like voice text to

voice, voice to text. Um, but they also

have like an agents SDK which is able to

kind of spoof like or or make a phone

call, right? You can queue up an agent

with a whole whole knowledge base. You

can give it a bunch of tools. You can

give the agents MCP servers as well,

which is crazy.

>> I guess that's like your MCP server can

have

>> MCP servers inside of them. Totally. Um,

but the crazy thing was is I had a bug

in my code and instead of like asking I

had it set up in cursor and I said

instead of like asking cursor to fix the

bug I said call Wes and ask him how to

fix the bug and it literally rang my

phone.

>> Oh yes.

>> Asked me what I would do in this

situation. I replied on the phone with

what I would do.

>> It transcribed it. put that back into

cursor. Cursor then parsed the whole

transcript and then put applied the

fixes. Obviously a stupid thing to do.

But that just goes to show

>> how and I'm often just shocked at how

you don't have to write any code for for

any of these. They just all work

together. Like so much of my career has

been wiring things together and with

these MCP servers, it just

most of the time just language is wired

together.

Yeah, exactly. So, I thought that was

that was a pretty funny and like just

like if if you haven't seen the benefit,

try that. Like it's it's eye opening as

to like how these things can work

together. My cursor called me on the

phone.

>> Cursor called me on the phone. That

seems like a uh

>> a nice little like dev horse story. I

was trying to fall asleep and cursor

called me on the phone. All right. So

next up is a class of um tools that I'm

calling like docs type of tools where

you are getting the the documentation

for various libraries. Now, context 7 is

the big one for this. And context 7

works super well because what you do

with context 7 is you're basically

saying, give me the documentation for

this library. Like, use context 7 to

give me the documentation. And what it

does is it goes off and it gets the ID

first and then it goes and gets the the

docs. And that way it has that in its

context. So the agent is able to uh in

it in the context of what it's working

on able to take in the documentation of

the project that you're working in. Now

this can sometimes lead to context bloat

where it's bringing in a lot of too much

context and I have some solutions for

some of that here. But I found that this

is like one of the the best things to do

when you are finding that the agent or

the AI is writing code that is not in

adherence to the actual library. Um

because if if you say use context 7 to

get the up-to-date docs or whatever,

it's going to be able to have that in

its context and actually uh work on it.

One thing that I've been doing lately is

anytime I I have a library, whether

that's like

>> I I wrote the um zero spelt bindings for

zero sync, I threw that on context 7 and

it's been so nice to be able to be like

context 7 to make sure that you're using

the documentation for this. It's so key

especially for obviously for libraries

that don't like the the AI doesn't know

about or it's just hallucinating it

especially like sometimes it just

hallucinates method names when it

clearly has access to the types

>> which drives me nuts because like you

shouldn't

>> maybe you shouldn't even need docs if

the types are good enough.

>> Yeah, maybe. Yeah, sometimes it's just

for best practices or Yeah.

or examples of like how to how to

configure it and whatnot. That that's

really good as well. But like even just

like AI still writes old Tailwind all

the time and it's so frustrating.

>> It writes old everything. Yeah. And you

have to like explicitly tell it use

these features and like that's a bit of

a

>> like we're kind of stuck in this like

>> 2023

version of coding things unless you

explicitly tell it to use the newer

version of something. And like I I worry

about like React, all these new React

features we talked about last week.

>> Yeah.

>> And like it's it doesn't know about

spelt too. Yeah.

>> There's just so much of this stuff, you

know? I I And and for me, it's like not

even that. It's CSS, man. Like

>> the amount of things that I have to

throw into my my context or I have to

have special CSS agents to write good

CSS because AI models today, all of

them. And people that I hate that when

leave the comments, they just say AI,

but they don't even say which model.

Well, that's usually because it's most

of the models, right? They a lot of them

have the same issues. They all write dog

CSS. They all add background color

to stuff that does not need a

background, right? You you this is you

set the background of this input to be

the exact same as the background of the

container. Why? Yeah,

>> they don't need that. That's just making

this unmaintainable. or you used

transform translate instead of

translate. Gosh, that's the MCP server I

need is do not ever use transh transform

translate. Use translate already. Gosh.

Yeah. What does contact 7 have for like

modern CSS as well? because like we've

been blessed with so much new CSS in the

last like 2 years, you know, and I don't

see a lot of it having having huge

uptake. And I think partially that's

because obviously browser support. I

think also partially just because like

>> the AI just loves to absolute position

everything instead of use pop over and

anchor positioning.

>> Let me throw an ass ton of JavaScript in

here when you could use the popover API.

Like

okay. Uh I know I've been working on

something for this Wes personally I

because I'm just so fed up with the CSS

that uh it writes and I have my own like

CSS systems and you could obviously

train it on those systems but I want as

like a fundamental like CSS fundamentals

um because obviously the the models are

all trained on dog CSS because most

people write bad CSS. So it's a it's a

it's a problem. But I I I personally

want to solve this problem because it's

a problem. Now, addition to context 7,

there's something new kind of popping up

where libraries are doing their own MCP

servers. Um, I have the MCP registry

from um, GitHub pulled up. Um, we'll

link this in the show notes.

github.com/mcp.

One thing that you'll see on here is

there is a

MCP server specifically for KNX itself

working in Nux. And I haven't used the

Nux one, but it is by AntFu. So, I'm

going to put it in S tier just based on

that alone. But the one that I have used

in this regard is the new spelt MCP.

This is their official MCP server uh

from the spelt team. It's in the

spelt.dev. And all other libraries and

projects need to take note of how

stinking good this thing is because one

really cool tool that it has besides git

documentation. And you know the big

problem with spelt is that they decided

to release a completely new syntax for

everything like the the day before you

know models were released. So none of

the model like even modern models

anything that comes out GPT5 the new 4

they're all bad at spelt still they're

not they're not terrible they're getting

a little bit better but they're still

bad at spelt 5. So this fixes that

problem because you can say use spelt

mcp uh implement remote functions. It's

going to go off. It's going to get the

documentation for remote function

specifically and is going to use that to

to work on it. So, it always has that

context. The same thing that you would

have with context 7, but this one's very

targeted. It's going to know the exact

feature that you're asking it about. But

one of the coolest features in here is

the autofixer.

The autofixer takes in a string of an

entire component and then it returns

what's wrong about this component. That

way the the agent, the AI, whatever

you're working in can then use that

information to update your thing

locally. So this is sending a string of

your component and it's saying, "Hey,

you used on colon click instead of on

click." It it fixes the component that

rules. I think a lot of these things

need that.

>> How does that work? Is it is it just

like providing like a prompt to the AI

or is there literally like a linting

server hosted somewhere that it's it's

linting against?

>> Oh man, that's a great question for the

spelt team. I think I think it's

providing a prompt. It's sending your

string of your component to a

prompt somewhere. I don't know. But um

yeah,

>> cuz it it also could be like like uh

running it through like the Doesn't

Spelt have like a spelt llinter where it

will like it'll flag stuff that is is

maybe a possibly a bad practice?

>> Yeah. Yeah. Um

>> along with how to fix it.

>> Let's see. Claude use spelt autoixer

MCP to

lint.

Um let's find a spelt component. Let's

find the uh let's do menu here and we're

going to see what it does really quick.

Basically, what it's going to do is it's

going to like I said take a string of

that. It's going to send it off to the

MCP server.

>> The docs for this say it uses static

analysis to provide suggestions for

code. So

>> cool. what it

>> Thank you for looking it up instead of

just guessing.

>> Run all of that through a like static

analysis where it will look at all of

the code and there's there's likely

things in that as they they loop through

the tree of the spelt code that say ah

>> I noticed that on click um yeah let's

let's throw a warning for that as well

as a suggestion of how to fix it.

>> Yeah, it returns an um an object with

issues and suggestions. No issues.

>> It probably just runs it runs it

locally. So most of these MCP servers

are simply just spinning up like npx

commands in the background. Some of them

run Docker containers, some of them are

hosted externally. And

>> this is a remote to run it.

>> This is a remote one. Okay.

>> Yeah.

>> Cool. So I I think uh other uh

frameworks libraries should take note

that rules. I know people don't have

necessarily the resources or whatever,

but like autofixer thing, man, I love

that. I would love that for CSS. I would

love that for uh people who write React

code to do something that one line of

CSS would do like, hey, have you

considered learning CSS before

installing something, you know,

>> hey, maybe this is this is outdated or

or just like like a MCP server full of

dead simple examples that can then be

projected

>> on your codebase, especially for a lot

more of the modern CSS stuff. Um, one

MCP server I love or probably 15 is the

Cloudflare has

>> like 15 different MCP servers for each

of their products. So they have one for

docs, which is good if you need docs on

how how workers run, but then you can

also use it just like an API to like

spin up a container or

>> create a binding to a a database in this

project. So where you might have

previously had to like figure out what

is the like wrangler command that I need

to type exactly to make this work. It's

so beautiful just to be able to type,

you know, spin up a new D1 database and

and put it in my Wrangler bindings.

>> Yeah, I love that because again

otherwise Yeah, having to navigate the

Cloudflare UI does drive me nuts

sometimes. I don't know about you, but

like as I I use more and more of their

tools, I'm just like, man, I feel like

they could they could rethink some of

this

>> stuff. They're having the same problem

that Amazon had years ago, which was

like initially Cloudflare was like dead

nuts simple and then as more products

get added,

>> it's just like

>> where where do I even go for the like I

was looking for my tunnels the other day

and I just it took me like five minutes

just to find the link to find where

tunnels were, but their search was

actually really good and I ended up just

typing in tunnels into the search. Um,

so

>> I happen to feel like it's a prank.

They're like, "We have a tool called

tunnels, and we're going to make you go

through

>> countless tunnels and mazes to actually

get to where you're trying to

>> find where it is."

>> I don't know that I could design a

better version of that. Like that's

where like

>> no

>> proper application designers come into

play because like trying to keep things

simple but also still surface all the

knobs uh for when people want them is a

very hard thing to design around.

>> Yeah. Yeah, for sure. That is tough. Um

next one here is the Chrome Dev Tools or

Playright MCP servers. I've been using

Chrome DevTools uh over Playright MCP

servers for doing the same type of task

now since they were released. So, this

is a brand new one. If you haven't heard

about it, Chrome DevTools have released

an official MCP server. It

>> did a show on it.

>> We did a show on it last Monday. So, you

you should have heard it. We uh if

you're listening, we should have heard

it. This thing rules. Uh again, this one

is running in just an npx command and it

is firing this thing up. And I let me

tell you, I've had such good luck with

getting into loops where I'm saying test

this in the Chrome uh DevTools MCP

server. That way it can find console

logs. Um it can find like visual things

that are off with it. It's taking

screenshots. It's doing all kinds of

stuff and you can see it work too. So

it's not just like happening blind in

the background. Yeah. like emulate

network, list console logs, click, drag,

fill, form. I mean, there's 26 tools

here. Uh getting performance. So, if you

want to evaluate performance, finding

animation issues or or key frame uh key

key frame uh frame drops. Yeah,

>> there's key frames, too. Uh, I don't

know if it's accessible via the the dev

tools, but you know what is one move

that that I really like in this is if

you're working with an API that doesn't

have types and you don't know what the

API response looks like. Normally what

you do is you just console log it and

take a look at it

>> and then maybe you copy paste that

object out into some converter and

convert types for it. Um but what you

can do in this case is simply just say

hey run the fetch console log it see

what you get then write types for that

then

um change it to be like an error like m

make it intentionally break and then

look at what the response for that looks

like and then all of a sudden you have

like this these beautiful types and and

you can write a whole function that will

go ahead and and fetch everything for

you.

>> Yeah. And people who are um allergic to

AI stuff, like you got to be able to see

the utility in that, you know,

>> you're doing that anyway.

>> You're doing that anyway. Also, that's

like such a bad waste of time. It's

something that you need, but you're like

the pro the process of you going to do

that. Like that's not helping you. So

like uh use the tool that just goes and

does it for you. Uh verify, validate,

all that stuff. But use use the tool.

It's great. This is this one to me

couldn't be any more S tool. uh S tier S

tool S tier Chrome developer tools MCP.

Um here's one that I used recently the

other day uh that I was just blown away

by is the Stripe MCP server. My gosh, I

told Stripe to create a product um add

it to my my codebase or whatever, make a

buy now button just for fun and man, it

went through and just instantly it took

no time at all. It made the I got all

the every single thing right about it.

I've used Stripe a lot myself. So, it's

not like uh something that I'm just

like, "Oh, okay. We'll see if this

works." No, I I told this to create this

product in this specific way and within,

you know, a minute I was I had a working

product in my sandbox and I was just,

wow, okay, this to me saved me so much

time again of going back and forth, hot

potatoing things from the UI to my code,

adding IDs, whatever. And the end result

couldn't have been better. I found the

Stripe um MCP server to just be

shockingly super good.

>> You know, another neat thing like of

course this is good for for development,

but I'm thinking about like the amount

of tooling like internal tooling I've

written against Stripe for uh refunds,

partial refunds, um uh taxes stuff,

payment, you know, being able to change

somebody's address on an invoice. all of

that. So much like crappy internal

tooling as well, you know, like it's not

it's not great UI. it works, you know,

and and my assistant knows how to use

it. But I just look at this and think

like

>> how sick would that be just to give her

a chat box instead or don't even have a

person, you know, and and like of course

you just approve these things, but just

like before like as the request comes

in, just ceue up the chat and propose

>> refund $6 in in Canadian or something

like that and it just hit the button and

it will go off and do it for you. It's

just all that wiring up time is gone

with a lot of stuff.

>> Time. Yeah. And and even like I said,

you can create products, create

customers, list customers, create

prices, invoices, finalize invoice. You

can do so much stuff with this. Uh

create coupon all this. The entire

Stripe dashboard is essentially here as

an MCP server. And I found it to be just

just top tier, excellent, worked really

well. If you're working with Stripe in

any capacity, throw this in. Um, you

won't regret it. I I found this to be

just really really great. Last one I

have here is less of an MCP server and

more of a platform. Mastra, Mastra,

however you say it, folks. This is a

tool that allows you to build like

orchestration pipelines of potentially

tools talking to other tools. But the

cool thing about Mastra and uh the cool

thing about it is you can expose and

create MCP servers with this. So, I can

make my own MCP server that maybe I'm

writing with just straight up JavaScript

to go and scrape pages or do this or

that. Or perhaps I wrote a tool that

scrapes a page. That tool then uses

another tool to save it to a SQLite

database. And then I have another tool

that's exposed as an MCP server to use

information from that database that I'm

then able to call for my application. So

like I I built a tool that was scraping

MDN and putting the things that I wanted

to have from it in a SQLite database.

Then I could then use MCP from cloud

code to say uh go grab this um MDN doc.

It looks it up from my database, looks

up the URL, then uses web search to load

that page, then read some of that

information. So you can really get

totally customized with this thing. the

MCP. Again, the the server that you're

writing can just be straight up

JavaScript. It can be the result of an

uh an agent. It can be the result of

other tool calls. And you can build

these things all up and then expose it

as an MCP server. And this isn't like a

brand new tool. It's newish and it's

really super good. Another thing that

some people might like about this is

that there is UI in all of this stuff.

So as you're building it, when you're

testing these things, you can click

around, you can see the results, you can

see the returns, you can, you know, run

things in parallel branch loop. I mean,

it's very powerful tool even if you're

not using to be its most powerful uh

features. This thing rules and I've been

having a lot of fun building my own

stuff with it.

>> Yeah, they OpenAI actually just released

something yesterday at the recording

that's very similar to this as well,

which is just wiring things up. you

know, you can click and drag things

together. I still think like if this and

that kind of dropped the ball because

this this was their game, you know, but

yeah, this is this is really cool just

to be able to drag and drop and and

click things together as you need it. I

was I was looking into this as well

because a lot of people are thinking

like, okay, I need something like this

for my business and OpenAI is trying to

like get you to to bring that into chat

GPT or you can host your own. they

released this thing called chat kit um

which kind of seems similar to this but

yeah a lot of people want to build these

custom flows for themselves but also

give them to

possibly the non-technical audience that

they can just wire things up.

>> Yeah, this to me feels like firmly a dev

tool, but then you can expose it as an

MCP server to then connect to whatever

application you're using it in. So there

there's so much here. Um, this thing is

really pretty neat and I found working

with it to be generally um, you know,

there are some iffy things here and

there in the docs. It's some new stuff

here and there, but like in general, I

found this to be especially for like

developers to to feel like, wow, this is

a really cool tool. I I've been really I

don't know how much you've had to deal

with this, but I I've been really

getting into context management. Um,

people call it context engineering

sometimes. And it's like, how do you

give the AI enough context to do its

job, but not too much because the more

and more you pollute that context, the

more and more you get bad results,

hallucinated results. Uh, you fill up

the context and then it has to

summarize. And then man, I I was doing

so much with agents and sub agents that

were first calling and reading u large

MD documents and then it just like

wouldn't be able to do anything cuz that

context window would fill up so quickly.

So yeah, a lot of interesting stuff

here. These can solve some of those

problems. Probably worth an episode of

its own. Uh folks, is there an MCP

server that you use in your development

that really, really, really helps you

out? Is there something that we didn't

talk about that you feel like is

necessary in day-to-day development? I

want to hear from you because man, every

single time I find a new one of these,

like the Stripe one, that makes me uh

really that excited. I just like, man,

this is uh this is a really cool place

to be where I'm no longer having to go

learn and explore some UI. I'm now

getting to interact with it in the

language. I need a product. It needs to

look like this. Give it to me now. You

know, love that. Beautiful. All right,

thanks so much for tuning in. Catch you

later. Peace.