Provenance#
Who published this, and did they prove it? Look at the registry namespace and confirm the endpoint's domain matches it.
Is the source public, and is it maintained? A public repository with no commit in a year is a different risk from an actively maintained one. An archived repository is a decision the vendor has already made for you.
What licence governs it? Relevant if you self-host or fork. Often absent on hosted-only servers, legitimately.
Deployment#
Does it run on their infrastructure or yours? Settle this before anything else; it constrains every later answer.
Which transport does it use? Streamable HTTP is the current norm; SSE appears in older records. Both are ordinary HTTPS from a network perspective.
If hosted, where does the data go? Usually undocumented. Ask explicitly, and ask in writing.
Access#
Does it require authentication at all? Check it yourself rather than assuming.
Is it OAuth, or a long-lived key? OAuth with discovery metadata means your IdP can participate. A static key usually means a human pastes a credential into a config file.
Can you grant read without granting write? Only possible if the server publishes separate scopes. Many do not.
Does it support dynamic client registration? Without it, an administrator registers a client by hand before anyone can connect — a real operational cost at scale.
Controls#
Is audit logging documented for this server? Not for the vendor — for the server. These are different claims.
What is retained, and for how long? Rarely documented at the server level.
Which credential-shaped inputs does it declare, and are they marked as secrets? An input named api_key that the publisher did not flag as secret may be logged in plain text by a well-behaved client doing exactly what it was told.