Building MCP servers for Claude & Cursor? Here's a starting point.

Most MCP servers I see in the wild start as a quick script and stay that way — no validation, no structured logging, no tests, and a deploy story that means shipping node_modules around. I got tired of rebuilding the same scaffolding every time a client project needed a Model Context Protocol server, so I open-sourced the template I now start every one from: 🚀 mcp-server-template It's a production-ready TypeScript/Node.js foundation for building MCP servers that connect AI agents like Claude Desktop and Cursor to your tools, data, and workflows. 𝗚𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘀: git clone https://github.com/qmmughal/mcp-server-template.git cd mcp-server-template && npm install cp .env.example .env npm run dev That spins up a working server in watch mode. npm test runs the Vitest suite, npm run build bundles everything into a single dist/index.js with esbuild — no node_modules to deploy. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗮 𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗹 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸𝘀 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲: Every tool gets a Zod schema, a definition, and a handler — so a malformed AI payload gets rejected with a clean error instead of crashing your process: const schema = z . object ({ text : z . string (). describe ( " The text to process " ), repeat : z . number (). int (). min ( 1 ). max ( 10 ). optional () }); export async function handleExampleTool ( args : unknown , service : ExampleService ) { return withErrorHandling ( " process_text " , async () => { const { text , repeat } = validateArgs ( schema , args ); const result = await service . processText ( text , repeat ); return { content : [{ type : " text " , text : result }] }; }); } 𝗘𝘅𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗹𝘀: Drop a new file in src/tools/ following the same schema → definition → handler shape Register it in src/tools/index.ts — add your definition to the tools list and a case to the switch statement that routes CallToolRequest to your handler Put your real logic in src/services/ so the protocol layer stays thin and your business logic stays unit-testable in isolation Resources (data the