{"slug": "show-hn-opscat-a-single-binary-software-catalog-with-mcp-for-ai-agents", "title": "Show HN: OpsCat – A single-binary software catalog with MCP for AI agents", "summary": "OpsCat, a single-binary software catalog with native MCP support for AI agents, launches as an open-source alternative to heavy developer portals like Backstage. Written in Go with an embedded React/Vite Web UI, it consumes under 30MB RAM and requires zero configuration, auto-discovering microservices, tech stacks, containers, infrastructure, and APIs from a codebase. The tool provides an interactive 2D dependency graph, automated compliance scorecards, and a Model Context Protocol server that lets AI coding agents query service architecture, owners, and health metrics directly.", "body_md": "**The Zero-Config, Single-Binary Software Catalog & MCP Platform Engine**\n\n*Auto-discover microservices, visualize software architecture graphs, enforce compliance scorecards, and expose your catalog natively to AI coding agents.*\n\nLegacy developer portals (like Backstage) are notoriously heavy, requiring weeks of boilerplate TypeScript setup, complex yarn monorepos, and high memory footprints (>1GB RAM).\n\n**OpsCat** reimagines platform engineering for 2026:\n\n- ⚡\n**Single Binary (< 30MB RAM)**: Written in Go with embedded React/Vite Web UI. Zero external runtime dependencies. - 🔍\n**Zero-Config Auto-Discovery**: Crawls your codebase to automatically infer tech stacks (Go, Node, Python, Rust, Java), containers (`Dockerfile`\n\n), infrastructure (`K8s`\n\n,`Helm`\n\n,`Terraform`\n\n), and APIs (`OpenAPI`\n\n,`GraphQL`\n\n,`Proto`\n\n). - 🕸️\n**Interactive 2D Dependency Graph**: Visualizes software relationships, systems, and resource dependencies in real time. - 🤖\n**Native MCP (Model Context Protocol) Server**: Gives AI coding agents (Claude, Cursor, Antigravity, Devin) direct context to query service architecture, owners, and health metrics. - 🛡️\n**Automated Compliance Scorecards**: Automatically calculates service health scores (0-100%) based on documentation, ownership, containerization, and API specs.\n\nBuild directly from source:\n\n```\ngit clone https://github.com/opscat/opscat.git\ncd opscat\ngo build -o bin/opscat ./cmd/opscat\n```\n\nScan your current workspace to auto-discover services and save to SQLite:\n\n```\n./bin/opscat scan .\n```\n\nRun a single command to serve the **Glassmorphic Web UI**, **REST API**, and **MCP Server**:\n\n```\n./bin/opscat serve --http :8080\n```\n\nOpen ** http://localhost:8080** in your browser!\n\nOpsCat provides an intuitive command-line interface:\n\n| Command | Description |\n|---|---|\n`opscat scan [path]` |\nAuto-discover microservices and catalog entities in target directory |\n`opscat serve [--http :8080]` |\nStart combined Web UI, REST API, and MCP Server |\n`opscat serve --stdio` |\nRun MCP Server over stdio (for IDEs / Cursor / Claude Desktop) |\n`opscat query [name]` |\nLookup catalog entities by ID, owner, or search term |\n`opscat export [-o json|yaml|table]` |\nExport catalog graph in JSON, YAML, or ASCII table format |\n\nOpsCat implements the **Model Context Protocol (MCP)** specification, allowing AI agents to understand your platform topology.\n\nAdd to your MCP server configuration (`mcpServers`\n\nsection):\n\n```\n{\n  \"mcpServers\": {\n    \"opscat\": {\n      \"command\": \"/usr/local/bin/opscat\",\n      \"args\": [\"serve\", \"--stdio\"]\n    }\n  }\n}\n```\n\n`catalog_list_services`\n\n: List microservices with filtering by owner, tech stack, or minimum score.`catalog_get_service`\n\n: Retrieve detailed metadata, scorecards, and infrastructure specs.`catalog_scan_workspace`\n\n: Dynamically trigger workspace discovery.`catalog_get_dependencies`\n\n: Query upstream and downstream service dependencies.\n\nOpsCat works out of the box with **zero configuration**. Optionally add a `catalog.yaml`\n\nto any repository root to override or enrich metadata:\n\n```\nkind: service\nname: payment-service\ntitle: Global Payment Gateway Service\ndescription: Core PCI-compliant payment processing engine.\nowner: team-fintech\nsystem: checkout-pipeline\ndomain: e-commerce\ntags:\n  - payments\n  - fintech\n  - pci-dss\nlinks:\n  - title: GitHub Repository\n    url: https://github.com/org/payment-service\n    type: github\n  - title: Grafana Dashboard\n    url: https://grafana.internal/d/payments\n    type: dashboard\nrelations:\n  - type: dependsOn\n    target: auth-service\n  - type: consumesApi\n    target: stripe-gateway\n┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐\n│                        OpsCat Single Binary                            │\n│                                                                        │\n│  ┌─────────────────────────┐  ┌─────────────────────────────────────┐  │\n│  │   Auto-Discovery        │  │   Embedded Web UI (Vite + React)    │  │\n│  │   - Go, Node, Py, Rust  │  │   - Glassmorphic Dashboard          │  │\n│  │   - Docker, K8s, Helm   │  │   - Interactive 2D Vis.js Graph     │  │\n│  │   - Terraform, OpenAPI  │  │   - Scorecard & Entity Drawer       │  │\n│  └────────────┬────────────┘  └──────────────────┬──────────────────┘  │\n│               │                                  │                     │\n│               ▼                                  ▼                     │\n│  ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐  │\n│  │                     Unified Catalog Store                        │  │\n│  │           (Thread-Safe In-Memory Graph + SQLite Engine)          │  │\n│  └────────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────┘  │\n│                                   │                                    │\n│                                   ▼                                    │\n│                 ┌───────────────────────────────────┐                  │\n│                 │   Native MCP (JSON-RPC) Server    │                  │\n│                 │   (Stdio & HTTP SSE Transports)   │                  │\n│                 └───────────────────────────────────┘                  │\n└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘\n```\n\nRun unit tests across all core packages:\n\n```\ngo test ./... -v\n```\n\nDistributed under the Apache 2.0 License. See `LICENSE`\n\nfor more information.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-opscat-a-single-binary-software-catalog-with-mcp-for-ai-agents", "canonical_source": "https://github.com/sumant1122/opscat", "published_at": "2026-07-28 08:24:30+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-28 08:52:40.751023+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["developer-tools", "ai-agents", "artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["OpsCat", "Backstage", "Claude", "Cursor", "Devin", "Model Context Protocol"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-opscat-a-single-binary-software-catalog-with-mcp-for-ai-agents", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-opscat-a-single-binary-software-catalog-with-mcp-for-ai-agents.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-opscat-a-single-binary-software-catalog-with-mcp-for-ai-agents.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-opscat-a-single-binary-software-catalog-with-mcp-for-ai-agents.jsonld"}}