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@piiq is this what you were looking for? 👀

Thanks for the PR, @MagnusS0, and great idea!

Can you look at incorporating this, either as an extra here, as a keyword argument in the openbb-api command line launcher; or, as a standalone extension with a dedicated launcher?

A similar pattern can be established where the FastAPI instance is being imported from openbb-core, ultimately using uvicorn to target that specific instance for starting the server.

Some degree of separation is going to be desirable and we'll need to expose the complete configurations for this server somewhere, potentially under, "system_settings:mcp_settings". The system_settings.json file can be read by the specific implementation at runtime and these definitions will not impact the main application.

BTW this, system_service.system_settings.python_settings.docstring_max_length = 1024, won't actually do anything as that only affects the Python docstrings, which is a completely independent from the API interface.

Hi @MagnusS0 this indeed is a nice addition. I can only second @deeleeramone that it would be better if this is a standalone extension or a part of the openbb-platform-api. If the latter I personally would prefer that it will have it's own launch command like openbb-mcp similarly to how openbb-api is defined here. If the former feel free to create a folder in openbb_platform/extensions.

I've taken a look at the fastapi-mcp package and apart from the mcp itself it does not seem to pull any new dependencies (which is a good thing)

Regarding the problem of the server not shutting down - I thing it is going to be best to debug this once we separate the mcp from the openbb_core codebase. It would make it easier to focus.

Thanks for the PR and let us know if you need any guidance

Thanks for the feedback. I'll look at how to implement it as an extension.

Btw, does all endpoints have operation IDs?

I noticed it's used to get schemas for widgets here. Might be able to use this as an another layer of filtering before the agent gets the tools. Fetching all equity tools at once for example cost a lot of tokens. So reducing this to just a specific needed operations would be great.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll look at how to implement it as an extension.

Btw, does all endpoints have operation IDs?

I noticed it's used to get schemas for widgets here. Might be able to use this as an another layer of filtering before the agent gets the tools. Fetching all equity tools at once for example cost a lot of tokens. So reducing this to just a specific needed operations would be great.

Operation IDs are assigned when openapi.json is built. That is first moment when the APIs endpoints are known.

Just an update on this, I have a master thesis to deliver in 10 days so will probably not contribute anything before after that. In case someone else wants to give it a go 🚀

Good luck with your thesis. This PR will be waiting for you

@piiq @deeleeramone I have now made the MCP as a standalone extension, and added a new MCPSettings following how the OpenBB Platform API settings are set up. Let me know if this is closer to what you had in mind and any feedback.

I have tested with GPT-4.1 and it is surprisingly good at finding the right tools, with minimal instructions 😄

Know limitations:
The dynamic update of tools works well with one agent connected. But, if you have multiple agents (or useres) connected and one decides to activate some tool it also becomes available to all other connected agents, same goes the other way, if an agent deactivates a tool this deactivates the tool for all other connected agents.

@MagnusS0, did you happen to try out this library already? It offers considerably more functionality and tooling at the developer level - and supports the current MCP transport protocol.

Fwiw this worked for me - good job @MagnusS0 !!!

But ya, I wonder if the library that @deeleeramone suggested is more indicated!

Hey @piiq

Thanks for looking through this!

Agree on migrating to use FastMCP. Started looking into it after @deeleeramone mentioned it. More active and follows MCP standards more closely. It also supports Prompt templates and Resources which there might be some cool use-cases for.

I started on a rewrite today, but have to figure out how to implement the "management" tools, aka how to hot-swap tools at runtime without restarting the server. Any ideas here would be very helpful. It is supposed to be possible based on the original documentation (https://modelcontextprotocol.io/docs/concepts/tools#python)

I'll make sure to also move the configs and switch to argparse before pushing an update 🚀

Okey so fully refactored to use FastMCP 2.0! Streamable HTTP is now supported in addition to SSE and stdio. Also future support for Resources and PrompTemplates when clients start supporting it.

For multiple users it can be run with the discovery tools disabled, then the tools are set, so no dynamic changes. Then you can either limit the number of tools at startup or manually enable/disable e.g. in Cursor or Claud Desktop.

There is also no longer a problem with shutting it down when clients are connected. And settings has been integrated in the extension and swapped to argparse

Next is to implement unit tests, and probably look into authentication

I was able to access this data on Cursor. However, I would add some instructions on how to add it to a few of the popular MCP Clients, e.g. https://docs.financialdatasets.ai/mcp-server#cursor

Also - I wasn't able to add it to the OpenBB workspace running locally due to CORS. I solved the issue by creating a proxy. I pushed the code here for context: #7156

But @MagnusS0 suggested having a look at https://gofastmcp.com/deployment/asgi instead

@deeleeramone can the mcp potentially utilize the same cors settings that we set for the platform rest api from system settings json?
If you look at the code, how big is the gap? Will it be a good design decision?

@deeleeramone can the mcp potentially utilize the same cors settings that we set for the platform rest api from system settings json?
If you look at the code, how big is the gap? Will it be a good design decision?

Sorry, I guess it's already doing that.

@DidierRLopes what do you have in the cors section of your system_settings.json?

https://docs.openbb.co/platform/settings_and_environment_variables#api-settings

@deeleeramone can the mcp potentially utilize the same cors settings that we set for the platform rest api from system settings json? If you look at the code, how big is the gap? Will it be a good design decision?

I don't see why not, the default configuration is available via SystemService and just needs to be imported.

from openbb_core.app.service.system_service import SystemService

In [3]: SystemService().system_settings.api_settings
Out[3]: 
APISettings

version: 1
title: OpenBB Platform API
description: Investment research for everyone, anywhere.
terms_of_service: http://example.com/terms/
contact_name: OpenBB Team
contact_url: https://openbb.co
contact_email: hello@openbb.co
license_name: AGPLv3
license_url: https://github.com/OpenBB-finance/OpenBB/blob/develop/LICENSE
servers: [{'url': '', 'description': 'Local OpenBB development server'}]
cors: {'allow_origins': ['*'], 'allow_methods': ['*'], 'allow_headers': ['*']}
custom_headers: None
prefix: /api/v1

class Cors(BaseModel):
    """Cors model for FastAPI configuration."""

    model_config = ConfigDict(frozen=True)

    allow_origins: List[str] = Field(default_factory=lambda: ["*"])
    allow_methods: List[str] = Field(default_factory=lambda: ["*"])
    allow_headers: List[str] = Field(default_factory=lambda: ["*"])

I was able to access this data on Cursor. However, I would add some instructions on how to add it to a few of the popular MCP Clients, e.g. https://docs.financialdatasets.ai/mcp-server#cursor

Also - I wasn't able to add it to the OpenBB workspace running locally due to CORS. I solved the issue by creating a proxy. I pushed the code here for context: #7156

But @MagnusS0 suggested having a look at https://gofastmcp.com/deployment/asgi instead

This is because the Middleware is not being added to the FastMCP server.

I was able to access this data on Cursor. However, I would add some instructions on how to add it to a few of the popular MCP Clients, e.g. https://docs.financialdatasets.ai/mcp-server#cursor
Also - I wasn't able to add it to the OpenBB workspace running locally due to CORS. I solved the issue by creating a proxy. I pushed the code here for context: #7156
But @MagnusS0 suggested having a look at https://gofastmcp.com/deployment/asgi instead

This is because the Middleware is not being added to the FastMCP server.

I tested this and it works for SSE, but I get a sesssion ID error when using streamable-http. They mention this is due to some lifespan issue, but following their docs didn't fix it...

My understanding was that it adopts the CORS settings from the underlying OpenBB platform FastAPI, but it seems that this is not the case and it needs to be set manually for the mcp server. So either add CORS settings to the mcp settings or use settings from the systems settings.

I tested this and it works for SSE, but I get a sesssion ID error when using streamable-http. They mention this is due to some lifespan issue, but following their docs didn't fix it...

The existing FastAPI app has a lifespan context, so perhaps related to "nested lifespans". Perhaps needs to be replaced explicitly?

For Streamable HTTP transport, you must pass the lifespan context from the FastMCP app to the resulting Starlette app, as nested lifespans are not recognized. Otherwise, the FastMCP server’s session manager will not be properly initialized.

Got it working by setting stateless_http=True

THAT WORKED 🔥 🔥 🔥

@MagnusS0 this is the most valuable and meaningful external contribution to the repo I've seen in a while.

Thank you for investing time into this. This is a very good addition to OpenBB

Thanks! Really appreciate that, and I'm happy to contribute 🫡

@MagnusS0 this is the most valuable and meaningful external contribution to the repo I've seen in a while.

Thank you for investing time into this. This is a very good addition to OpenBB

I second this! 💪

@MagnusS0 can you fix the linters please? 😂😅

Once we get all checks to pass this will be good to go

@MagnusS0 can you fix the linters please? 😂😅

Once we get all checks to pass this will be good to go

Should pass now, ran the pre hooks 10x

Thank you very much for the contribution!

Uploaded to PyPI https://pypi.org/project/openbb-mcp-server/

Should be able to start the server by running:

uvx --from openbb-mcp-server --with openbb openbb-mcp

@MagnusS0 since you own the pypi project we'll be tagging you for patches and uploads. If you want, you can add @deeleeramone or the openbb account to the project maintainers so that we can push updates. This is going to happen once in a while and most likely be related to patches of vulnerabilities in the package dependency tree.

Let me know how you prefer to handle this

@piiq Invited both opnebb and @deeleeramone as maintainers 🫡 Feel free to tag me anytime as well!