MCP

Xplorer embeds an MCP server for ease of use and is easy to integrate with any LLM or IDE that can talk to MCP servers. This means that you are in control over your data or in other words, you "Bring Your Own LLM", so even a local LLM or the one approved for use for your organization will work, if it supports MCP.

The following core capabilities are exposed:

• xplorer_script - let an LLM remote control Xplorer and do the work of creating chained flows with variables and dynamic requests
• http_client - a scriptable HTTP client that allows the LLM to make calls and re-try input parameters until they work.
• api_spec_utilities - able to read an OpenAPI or Swagger spec from the file-system or URL and work with it
• http_mock_server - (experimental) spin up a mock server on the fly and program it to handle state and dynamically respond to incoming HTTP requests

When you combine all the four above, you can get some very useful results. For example:

• upload a requirements document, make a logical sequence of HTTP calls and add them to Xplorer
• refer to an OpenAPI specification and ask the LLM to create HTTP calls and add them to Xplorer
• create a mock-server that replicates some functionality of an existing API (see video)
• make sure that authentication, and setting variables and dynamic request parameters works in Xplorer
• ask the LLM to explain the sequence currently open in Xplorer

Starting

Note

Starting the MCP server requires a paid subscription.

Head over to the MCP tab and click the start button. After that you can copy the JSON snippet and add it to your MCP host configuration.

If there are other MCP servers, make sure that you add the comma if needed before "karate-xplorer".

The screenshot shows an example for MacOS, where the binary would typically be at: /Applications/Xplorer.app/Contents/MacOS/xp

On Windows it should look something like this:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "karate-xplorer": {
      "command": "C:/Program Files/Xplorer/xp.exe",
      "args": [		
        "mcp",
        "-p=8500"
      ]
    }
  }
}

After starting, you should see the button change to green with the option to stop the server.

Technical Notes

The command is in the form xp mcp -p=8500

• The xp or xp.exe binary is a command-line application that acts as an STDIO MCP server. SSE will be supported in the future.
• mcp is the CLI sub-command and more options will be available in the future such as MCP proxying, MCP traffic intercepting etc.
• -p or --port is not to be confused with MCP SSE. This port is for Xplorer internal websocket communication as shown below. This strategy allows multiple MCP clients to use a single instance of Xplorer. Some LLM clients such as Claude attempt to create more than one STDIO connection.

 ----------+        +----------+               +---------+
| MCP Host |<------>| xp STDIO |<------------->| Xplorer |
|          |  STDIO | bridge   |   WebSocket   | server  |
+----------+        +----------+               +---------+