lawzava MCP Setup
Resolve the exact scope first: which harness, which configuration file, and whether the server is global, project, or repository-local. Keep one registration channel per server; duplicate registrations across scopes produce conflicting tool lists and ambiguous failures.
Servers register at session start. After any configuration change, restart the session before expecting new tools. A tool missing from a live session is not evidence of a broken server.
Match the authentication flow to the execution mode. Browser OAuth completes only in an interactive session; a headless or non-interactive session cannot finish the grant. Provision a token, complete the grant interactively beforehand, or route through a proxy command that owns its own authentication. Record where the credential lives, and never write it into configuration committed to a repository. When inspecting configuration, print the keys, never the values.
Verify with a fresh probe, not the current session: start a new non-interactive session, list the server's tools, and call one read-only tool. Redact tokens and account identifiers before quoting probe output. A sandboxed probe can report a healthy server as broken when the sandbox blocks its state or socket files; re-run the probe outside the sandbox before concluding failure.
On failure, report the harness, scope, configuration path, server name, transport, authentication mode, and the exact error. Stop and report rather than editing credentials you cannot verify.