Pull Request Type

• ✨ feat
• 🐛 fix
• ♻️ refactor
• 💄 style
• 🔨 chore
• 📝 docs

Relevant Issues

connect #3904, connect #3902, connect #3681, connect #3671, connect #3703

What is in this change?

Problem: MCP servers fail to start when AnythingLLM is launched via GUI on macOS, Docker, and other environments with -32000 Connection closed errors. The root cause is improper environment variable inheritance in the #buildMCPServerENV method.

Root Issues Fixed:

1. No PATH inheritance for desktop apps: GUI applications get no default PATH, causing npx/node not found errors
2. Incorrect Docker NODE_PATH: Points to node binary (/usr/bin/node) instead of modules directory (/usr/local/lib/node_modules)
3. Missing base environment: When no user env specified, method returns empty object instead of essential PATH/NODE_PATH

Evidence:

• GUI Launch: PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin (missing /usr/local/bin) → MCP fails
• CLI Launch: PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/Cellar/node/23.11.0/bin:/usr/bin:/bin → MCP works

Solution:

• Always provide base environment with proper PATH/NODE_PATH inheritance
• Fixed Docker NODE_PATH to point to correct modules directory
• Preserve user environment variable overrides
• Maintain backward compatibility

User Experience Improvement:
The fix enables clean, natural MCP configurations without shell workarounds:

✅ Now Works:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "brave-search": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-brave-search"],
      "env": { "BRAVE_API_KEY": "your-api-key" }
    }
  }
}

Developer Validations

• I ran yarn lint from the root of the repo & committed changes
• Relevant documentation has been updated
• I have tested my code functionality
• Docker build succeeds locally