akashi

Verify an MCP server is alive and conformant. Keyless.

akashi probes a Model Context Protocol server with only public, unauthenticated signals and tells you whether it is healthy, degraded, or dead. It emits an embeddable "verified on DATE" badge for the healthy ones.

The name means "proof" or "certificate" (証) in Japanese.

Zero keys, by construction

akashi reads only public endpoints: the official MCP registry, the GitHub API, the npm and PyPI registries, Docker Hub's anonymous manifest API, and the server's own remote endpoint via a capability-only MCP initialize handshake.

It never authenticates to a probed server and never runs one of its tools. The initialize request negotiates protocol capabilities and executes nothing, so it is safe to send to a server you do not trust. Any GitHub token akashi finds (GITHUB_TOKEN, GH_TOKEN, or your local gh) is used only against the public GitHub API to raise the rate limit, exactly as a human running gh would. No user secret is ever sent to a probed server.

Install

curl -fsSL https://roninforge.org/akashi/install.sh | sh

Or with Go:

go install github.com/RoninForge/akashi/cmd/akashi@latest

Usage

akashi check <server>

<server> may be:

• an official-registry server name (io.github.owner/name)
• a GitHub repository URL (https://github.com/owner/repo)
• a remote endpoint URL (https://mcp.example.com/sse)

A healthy server that ships an npm package:

$ akashi check ai.adeu/adeu

ai.adeu/adeu  checked 2026-07-02 UTC, keyless

  PASS  registry status                 active
  PASS  server.json valid               validates against its declared JSON Schema
  PASS  repo reachable                  exists
  PASS  repo freshness                  pushed 0d ago
  PASS  package npm                     published (1.18.1)
  PASS  at least one live entrypoint    2 alive
  PASS  license present                 MIT

  OK    healthy

A healthy hosted server, with its tools listed over a full MCP session:

$ akashi check ac.tandem/docs-mcp

ac.tandem/docs-mcp  checked 2026-07-02 UTC, keyless

  PASS  registry status                 active
  PASS  server.json valid               validates against its declared JSON Schema
  PASS  repo reachable                  exists
  PASS  remote reachable                HTTP 200 via initialize
  PASS  MCP conformance                 initialize handshake ok
  PASS  tools/list                      13 tools: search_docs, get_doc, ...
  PASS  at least one live entrypoint    2 alive

  OK    healthy

A dead one:

$ akashi check io.github.akutishevsky/spotify

io.github.akutishevsky/spotify  checked 2026-07-01 UTC, keyless

  PASS  registry status                 active
  FAIL  repo reachable                  404 (repository gone)
  FAIL  remote reachable                unreachable
  FAIL  at least one live entrypoint    nothing installable or reachable

  DEAD  dead (nothing works)
     reasons: repo_404, remote_unreachable

Output formats

akashi check <server> --json     # the full result row, for scripts and CI
akashi check <server> --badge    # a shields.io endpoint badge JSON

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	healthy
1	degraded, dead, or unknown (a real health finding)
2	invocation or network error

Census: scan the whole registry

akashi scan runs the same keyless check set as akashi check against every server in the official MCP registry and writes a dated dataset.

akashi scan --out ./census              # the whole registry
akashi scan --out ./census --limit 500  # a sample

It writes two files into --out:

• records.jsonl - one probe result per server, one JSON line each. Each line is byte-identical to akashi check <server> --json, so any row is independently reproducible with a single-server check.
• summary.json - verdict counts and rates, a remote-bearing segment, name validation findings, and the run's reproducibility parameters.

A scan resumes automatically: rerun with the same --out and servers already recorded are not re-probed. Concurrency, the per-server timeout, and the server count are tunable with --concurrency, --timeout, and --limit.

What it checks

Health (can I get and run this at all):

• Registry status: the registry has not deprecated or deleted it.
• Repository reachable: the source still exists (not 404, not archived).
• Repository freshness: last push under 90 days (pass), under a year (warn), over a year (fail).
• Package published: the npm, PyPI, or Docker Hub entrypoint installs.
• Remote reachable: the hosted endpoint answers. akashi tries a capability-only MCP initialize handshake first (which also yields the conformance signal), and falls back to a plain GET for transports the handshake cannot exercise (for example an SSE endpoint), so a transport mismatch is never called dead.
• At least one live entrypoint: something is actually usable.

Conformance (is it a well-behaved MCP server):

• server.json validates against the JSON Schema it declares. An invalid manifest downgrades the verdict to degraded.
• initialize handshake negotiates a protocol version.
• The JSON-RPC response echoes the request id (not an HTML page impersonating a server with a 200).
• tools/list resolves over a full MCP session, using the official MCP go-sdk client. This is the strongest keyless proof that the endpoint is a real, working server (a raw initialize 200 only shows it answered one request). It runs no tool: it connects, reads the advertised tool list, and closes. It is informational and never downgrades the verdict, since many valid servers advertise no tools.
• A license is declared.

An auth-gated remote (a 401/403 to initialize) is treated as alive, not broken. akashi never supplies credentials to reach past it, and does not attempt tools/list against it.

Verdicts

• healthy - at least one live entrypoint and nothing broken.
• degraded - usable, but something is broken (a 404 repo link while the package still installs, a stale-over-a-year repo, a deprecated registry entry, a down remote while a package works).
• dead - registry-deleted, or every probed entrypoint is broken.
• unknown - only entrypoints akashi cannot probe without a key were declared.

A degraded, dead, deprecated, or unknown server never renders a green "verified" badge.

Badge

--badge emits a shields.io endpoint JSON. Host it and embed:

![MCP health](https://img.shields.io/endpoint?url=https://your.host/akashi-badge.json)

A healthy server reads verified <date> in green; anything else reads its verdict, so a stale or broken server can never masquerade as verified.

GitHub Action

Fail CI when a server you depend on is not healthy:

- uses: RoninForge/akashi@v0
  with:
    server: io.github.owner/name
    # allow-degraded: true   # optional: only dead/unknown fails

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

Part of RoninForge. Sibling tools: hanko (plugin manifest validator), tsuba (skill scaffolder).