Summary
Live MCP scans that fail to start often show a generic "MCP SERVER FAILED TO START" panel without actionable categorization — or fall through to MCPProbeError when stderr patterns don't match. multi-server MCP repositories live scans with missing SSO credentials are hard to diagnose: operators can't tell env/config issue from MCTS bug from timeout.
Infrastructure for categorization exists (startup_errors.py) but coverage is incomplete and not always reached.
Problem
Live scan failure modes in validation:
| Category |
Example cause |
User needs |
| Missing credentials |
SSO_ENV, API tokens |
Set env / use --env-file (F9) |
| Import error |
wrong Python, missing module |
Fix venv / -m module (C12) |
| Process exit |
bad command path |
Fix .mcp.json launch args |
| Timeout |
server hang |
Increase timeout, check stderr |
| Unknown |
unmatched stderr |
Full stderr tail |
Proposed solution
Parse stderr; categorize credentials/health/timeout.
Acceptance Criteria
Summary
Live MCP scans that fail to start often show a generic "MCP SERVER FAILED TO START" panel without actionable categorization — or fall through to
MCPProbeErrorwhen stderr patterns don't match. multi-server MCP repositories live scans with missing SSO credentials are hard to diagnose: operators can't tell env/config issue from MCTS bug from timeout.Infrastructure for categorization exists (
startup_errors.py) but coverage is incomplete and not always reached.Problem
Live scan failure modes in validation:
--env-file(F9)-mmodule (C12).mcp.jsonlaunch argsProposed solution
Parse stderr; categorize credentials/health/timeout.
Acceptance Criteria
--env-filesuggestion in message