{"slug": "i-audited-8900-mcp-servers-and-agent-skills-for-clean-links-and-licence-data", "title": "I audited 8,900 MCP servers and agent skills for clean links and licence data", "summary": "A developer built Anclum, a directory of roughly 8,900 MCP servers, agent skills and open-source AI tools, after auditing entries for clean links and licence data rather than accepting paid placement. The audit found zero wrapper or tracking-parameter links across about 1,600 AI-tool entries, and among roughly 6,200 repositories with a resolvable licence, nearly 800 publish a server with no explicit licence. Each entry now records source count, first-seen and last-seen dates, licence and whether the repo has a SECURITY.md, with a read-only MCP endpoint available for agent queries.", "body_md": "There are dozens of directories indexing MCP servers and agent skills now. Almost all of them rank entries, and a fair number take money for placement. That makes two questions hard to answer from the listing itself:\n\nI spent the last few weeks aggregating about 8,900 entries (MCP servers, agent skills, open-source AI tools) and auditing them instead of just listing them. What follows is what turned up, including the parts that are still bad.\n\nIn this space a lot of listings point at a redirect or an affiliate URL rather than the project's own site. It is easy to miss because the link resolves fine - it just lands somewhere with a tracking parameter attached, or on a wrapper page that forwards you after setting a cookie.\n\nWe re-checked each tool link against its canonical destination and dropped the ones that only existed as a wrapper. The current count on roughly 1,600 AI-tool entries:\n\n| Check | Result | \n|---|---|\n| Links that go through a wrapper/redirect | 0 | \n| Links carrying tracking parameters | 0 | \n| Links to a page that no longer answers | tracked separately, not hidden | \n\nThe method is written on the site rather than in a blog post nobody updates, because the number is only useful if you can re-run it.\n\nIf someone is going to run an MCP server locally, the licence is not a detail. It decides whether they can use it at work, whether they can ship it inside a product, and whether AGPL obligations apply to their service.\n\nAlmost no directory shows it. We pulled it from each repository and display it as a fact line on the entry page, together with whether the repo has a `SECURITY.md`. Out of about 6,200 repositories with a resolvable licence:\n\nThat last bucket is the interesting one. Nearly 800 projects publish a server people are expected to run, with no explicit licence.\n\nDirectories usually show a rank or a star count, both of which age badly. What I actually want to know before opening a project is when it was last seen alive.\n\nEvery entry now carries how many sources listed it, when it was first seen and when it was last seen. If an entry has not been re-verified in months, that is visible rather than hidden behind an ordering.\n\nBeing honest about the limits is the only way the rest of it means anything:\n\nThe moment a directory accepts money for position, every other signal in it becomes unverifiable. So there is no sponsored slot, no featured tier, and ordering is by things you can check: sources, stars, recency, licence.\n\nIf you want to poke holes in the method, the entry pages show enough to do it. The audit rules and the current gaps are written up on the site.\n\nIt is at [https://anclum.com](https://anclum.com) and there is a read-only MCP endpoint at [https://anclum.com/mcp](https://anclum.com/mcp) if you would rather query it from an agent than browse it.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-audited-8900-mcp-servers-and-agent-skills-for-clean-links-and-licence-data", "canonical_source": "https://dev.to/anclum/i-audited-8900-mcp-servers-and-agent-skills-for-clean-links-and-licence-data-2khh", "published_at": "2026-10-27 08:39:25+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-27 08:43:16.626293+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["agent-protocols", "ai-agents", "ai-tools", "developer-tools"], "entities": ["Anclum", "MCP"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-audited-8900-mcp-servers-and-agent-skills-for-clean-links-and-licence-data", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-audited-8900-mcp-servers-and-agent-skills-for-clean-links-and-licence-data.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-audited-8900-mcp-servers-and-agent-skills-for-clean-links-and-licence-data.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/i-audited-8900-mcp-servers-and-agent-skills-for-clean-links-and-licence-data.jsonld"}}