MCP Servers Reference

Skill by ara.so — MCP Skills collection.

Overview

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a standardized interface that lets AI agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI, Windsurf) connect to external tools and services. This reference catalogs 50 essential, vetted MCP servers across 9 categories: core development, databases, infrastructure, productivity, fintech, web3, trading, creator tools, and reasoning/memory.

Critical context: Over 20,000 MCP servers exist in public registries, but most are abandoned, insecure, or poorly maintained. This curated list focuses on official or well-maintained community servers with verified install commands.

The Three Non-Negotiable Rules

1. Don't install more than 5-7 servers — Tool bloat degrades agent performance and reasoning quality. Pick 3-5 that match your actual workflow.

2. Treat every server like untrusted code — Pin versions, scope tokens to read-only until tested, prefer vendor-official over forks.

3. Never enable writes against production from an agent loop — Point at read replicas, snapshots, or dev environments for anything that can mutate data.

Installation Patterns