Installation

This guide will walk you through installing and building openapi-mcp from source.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have the following prerequisites:

  • Go 1.21 or higher (Download Go)
  • Git for cloning the repository
  • An OpenAPI 3.x YAML or JSON specification file that you want to expose as MCP tools

Build from Source

To build openapi-mcp from source, follow these steps:

1. Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/jedisct1/openapi-mcp.git
cd openapi-mcp

2. Build the Binaries

openapi-mcp uses a Makefile to simplify the build process. To build all binaries, run: 

make

This will place the command-line tools in the bin directory:

  • bin/openapi-mcp - Main tool that processes OpenAPI specs and serves MCP
  • bin/mcp-client - Interactive client for testing MCP tools

To build specific binaries: 

# Build only the main tool
make bin/openapi-mcp

# Build only the client
make bin/mcp-client

3. Clean Build Artifacts (Optional)

To clean build artifacts: 

make clean

Verifying Installation

To verify that the installation was successful, run: 

bin/openapi-mcp --help

You should see the help message with available command-line options.

Using Pre-built Binaries (When Available)

For some platforms, pre-built binaries may be available from the GitHub releases page.

Download the appropriate binary for your platform, extract it, and place it in your PATH.

Go Library Installation

To use openapi-mcp as a Go library in your own applications:

Main Library

For OpenAPI to MCP conversion functionality: 

go get github.com/jedisct1/openapi-mcp/pkg/openapi2mcp

MCP Package

For direct access to MCP server functionality: 

go get github.com/jedisct1/openapi-mcp/pkg/mcp/server

For MCP types and utilities: 

go get github.com/jedisct1/openapi-mcp/pkg/mcp/mcp

See the Library Usage documentation for detailed examples and API reference.

Next Steps

Now that you have installed openapi-mcp, you can: