Developer builds MCP-specific observability tool after generic APM tools fell short

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A developer created mcpobs, an open-source observability tool designed specifically for the Model Context Protocol (MCP), after finding that standard APM tools only surfaced generic HTTP-level data for MCP tool calls. Existing tracing solutions could not distinguish between actual tool failures, missing tools, argument validation errors, or expected 401 responses that are part of the MCP auth handshake. The tool can be installed via pip and classifies failures into actionable categories, tracks progress on long-running tools in real time, and links downstream database, HTTP, and LLM calls within the same trace. Released under the Apache-2.0 license, mcpobs is self-hostable via Docker Compose and requires no account to run. A hosted version is also available on an invite-only basis at mcpobs.dev for users who prefer not to manage the pipeline themselves.

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