# The MCP Server Pre-Publish Checklist > Source: > Published: 2026-06-15 08:38:37+00:00 **Before you publish an MCP server, run 10 checks.** Most servers fail at least three — and the failures are invisible until an agent picks the wrong tool, hallucinates an argument, or silently drops your server on connect. This is the checklist we built `mcp-probe` to enforce, distilled to what actually breaks in the wild. TL;DR — A publishable MCP server connects cleanly, names tools unambiguously, describes every argument, validates inputs, and ships install metadata. The single most common failure is thin tool descriptions: even the five official Anthropic reference servers cap at 60/100on description quality. MCP Inspector answers *"does my server connect and list tools?"* That's necessary, not sufficient. The agent doesn't experience your server the way you do in a UI — it experiences your **tool descriptions and schemas as text in a context window**, and it picks tools by reading them. A server can pass Inspector and still be functionally unpublishable because the model can't tell your tools apart. So the pre-publish question isn't "does it run?" It's **"is it publishable?"** — will a real agent, with no docs and no human in the loop, use it correctly? `initialize` .`initialize` fast.`create_issue` exists in a dozen servers. If yours collides, the model guesses. Namespace or specify.`server.json` so the official MCP Registry can discover you. Devs find tools at install-time, not search-time.You can walk this list by hand, or run it: ``` npx @incultnitollc/mcp-probe score "node ./your-server.js" ``` `mcp-probe` connects to your server, runs all ten checks, and returns a **0–100 publishability score** across five axes — description quality, enum/shape correctness, mutation legibility, anti-"restate the name" clauses, and distribution metadata. A passing server clears ~80. The official reference servers sit at 60 (the description cap fires on every one). A typical first-draft community server lands in the 40s. Wire it into CI so it runs on every release: ``` # .github/workflows/publishability.yml - run: npx @incultnitollc/mcp-probe score "node ./dist/server.js" --fail-under 80 ``` The exit code gates the publish. Your server can't regress below the bar you set. If you do nothing else: **rewrite your tool descriptions so a model with no context could choose correctly between yours and a similarly named tool.** That single fix moves more servers across the publishable line than any other on this list — and it's the one almost everyone skips. `mcp-probe` is an open-source CLI for testing and scoring MCP servers before you publish. `npx @incultnitollc/mcp-probe` · [github.com/incultnitollc/mcp-probe](https://github.com/incultnitollc/mcp-probe)