mcpc

mcpc is a universal command-line client for the Model Context Protocol, from Apify. The README describes it as a Swiss Army knife for MCP, mapping MCP operations to commands for interactive shell use, scripts and AI coding agents. It works with any MCP server over Streamable HTTP or stdio, keeps several persistent sessions alive at once, and supports instructions, tools, resources, prompts, async tasks and dynamic discovery. It does not use an LLM on its own.

The pitch for agents is "code mode": JSON output lets shell scripts and tools like `jq` chain MCP calls, on the argument that a Unix shell script is the most universal coding language. For safer use, `mcpc connect ... --proxy 8080` exposes an authenticated session as a local proxy MCP server that forwards requests but never reveals the original OAuth tokens or HTTP headers to the client, which the README suggests for AI sandboxes. Authentication includes full OAuth 2.1, with tokens and per-session headers kept in the OS keychain.

There is also experimental, opt-in support for the x402 payment protocol, where a `--x402` flag lets the client sign a USDC payment on Base and retry when a server charges for a tool call; the wallet key is stored in a `wallets.json` file with 0600 permissions. The README's security section tells you to treat MCP servers like shells: use least-privilege tokens, only trusted servers and audit tools. Install with `npm install -g @apify/mcpc`; the licence is Apache 2.0 and the last push was 2026-10-13. This review is based on the README and repository data; we have not run it ourselves.