MCP extension #

Persisted preferences are owned by the daemon and changed through the settings API. The CLI refreshes them on use and never writes settings files.

Albedo's mcp extension connects one session to configured Model Context Protocol servers and advertises their discovered tools, resources, and prompts as ordinary model tools. It is installed but disabled by default: enable it from /extensions, for every session or (after s) just the current one.

The client is barrel_mcp, so stdio and streamable HTTP transports, protocol negotiation, pagination, and cancellation come from a maintained MCP implementation. Albedo owns configuration, credential scope, naming, and lifecycle.

Add servers from albedo #

/mcp lists configured servers. n opens one form for a new server:

• transport: http (default) or stdio, switched with ← →.
• url for HTTP, or command for stdio, written as you would type it in a shell (npx -y @modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem "/srv/my docs"); quotes are honoured but no shell runs.
• name, suggested from the URL host or the command's package until you edit it.
• bearer token and one custom header for HTTP, or KEY=value env entries for stdio. These are optional, masked while typed, and stored by the daemon in creds.json (mode 0600), never in extensions.json.

Nothing is written until the form is saved with ctrl+s (or enter on its last field). The server and its credentials are saved together and the session reloads once; if the server cannot connect, both are restored and the form stays open with the error. enter edits a server in the same form (a blank secret keeps the stored one, - removes it), d deletes a server and its credentials, and e re-enables a server switched off with "enabled": false.

Configure servers #

Servers live in the mcp section of $ALBEDO_HOME/extensions.json (default ~/.albedo/extensions.json), never in config.json with provider credentials.

{
  "mcp": {
    "servers": {
      "docs": {
        "type": "stdio",
        "command": "/usr/local/bin/docs-mcp",
        "args": ["--root", "/srv/docs"],
        "cwd": "/srv/docs",
        "env": { "DOCS_TOKEN": { "env": "MY_DOCS_TOKEN" } }
      },
      "search": {
        "type": "http",
        "url": "https://mcp.example.com/mcp",
        "bearerTokenEnvVar": "MY_SEARCH_TOKEN",
        "enabledTools": ["search"],
        "callTimeoutMs": 30000
      }
    }
  }
}

Secrets are named, never inlined: every env value and HTTP header reads one process environment variable of the daemon, and a missing variable fails preparation instead of connecting without it. enabled, enabledTools, disabledTools, startupTimeoutMs, and callTimeoutMs are optional.

A stdio server is launched as an exact executable and argument vector through Albedo's own launcher, with no shell, a scoped working directory, discarded server stderr, and an environment reduced to HOME, PATH, TMPDIR, and the values you named. HTTP servers may use https or http, including trusted LAN and tailnet addresses. Plain HTTP provides no transport encryption by itself: use it only on a network you trust (a tailnet encrypts its own traffic). Credentials are sent to the configured endpoint, so verify its address before adding auth. URLs carrying userinfo or a fragment are rejected.

Tools and lifecycle #

Discovered capabilities are advertised as mcp_<server>_<operation>_<hash>, so two servers that expose the same tool name stay distinct and stable. Resources and prompts, when a server offers them, appear as one read_resource and one get_prompt operation per server. The catalog and its connections belong to the session composition: enabling, disabling, or reloading the extension prepares a replacement first and closes the previous connections only after a successful swap.

A server that cannot start, initialize, or be discovered is left out of the session and named in a warning; the servers that did connect load as usual. Bad configuration (an invalid name, a missing credential file, a catalogue over the size limit) still fails the whole preparation, and the session keeps its previous working composition. Disabling the extension closes every connection and terminates each stdio subprocess.

Servers that come back #

A server that was left out joins the session once it connects, the way a skill does after a reload: albedo prepares the extension again, appends a "capabilities changed" user turn, and keeps the cached system prompt until compaction.

There is no timer. The extension probes the missing servers when the session shows activity (a submit or the end of a turn), first retryMs after the session prepared and then at doubling intervals, capped at twenty times retryMs. A server found up waits for the end of a turn and then asks the session to refresh, so it appears after the turn that follows its return, not mid-turn. retryMs (default 30000) sits beside servers in the mcp section. A server that drops after connecting is not removed; its calls report a transport loss as before.

Saving a server #

The /mcp form and the capability toggle stay strict: saving or turning on a server that cannot start is refused (409) and the previous settings and credentials are restored, so a mistyped command is caught where it is typed. A server that is switched off, or off for the session by a capability choice, is not tried.

Tool calls may have side effects, so a failed or interrupted call is never retried automatically. Transport loss is reported as an unknown outcome, which the model must inspect before acting again.

Remote servers are untrusted input. Tool descriptions, resource contents, and prompt text are data, not instructions, and their schemas are bounded before they reach the model.