Deployments

Smithery Deployments allow you to host your STDIO MCP server as a server-side event (SSE) server on Smithery.

Benefits of hosting:

• Smithery will show an MCP playground on your server page, allowing users to try your tool calls before installing.
• Clients can use your server without needing to install dependencies.
• Smithery will rank hosted servers higher in our search results.

Overview

Deploying on Smithery is straightforward:

1. Add your server to Smithery (or claim it if it's already listed)
2. Connect the server with your Github repository
3. Commit a Dockerfile and smithery.yaml to your connected repository
4. Click Deploy on Smithery Deployments on your server page

That's it! Your MCP server will be built and deployed according to your configuration.

Required Files

There are two files required in your repository in order to deploy:

Dockerfile

Create a Dockerfile in your repository root that defines how to build your MCP server. Your Dockerfile should be created such that running your Docker image will start your STDIO server.

Here's an example Dockerfile that builds a Node-based MCP server:

We only support Linux Docker images on major distros (Alpine/Debian-based) and expect sh to run in your container. Other distros are untested and may not deploy.

You can find more examples of Dockerfiles in MCP's official reference implementations.

smithery.yaml

Create a smithery.yaml file in your repository root. This file defines how your MCP server should be started.

Here's a minimal example of a server with no configuration options:

The startCommand object consists of:

• type: stdio: Specifies that your repository is a standard I/O based MCP server
• configSchema: Defines the JSON Schema for your server's configuration options. Users will configure this your server using this schema. We will reject invalid configurations.
• commandFunction: A JavaScript function that returns the command and arguments to start your server. This function is run within your server's sandbox during runtime to parse the config specified by clients. You can trust that config input argument conforms to your configSchema.

Subdirectories

If your package is not in the root directory of your repository (in the case of a monorepo), you should place your Dockerfile and smithery.yaml in the subdirectory that contains your package. You will need to specify the base directory in your server settings on Smithery.

For example, if your MCP server is in the packages/mcp-server directory, you would:

1. Place your Dockerfile and smithery.yaml in the packages/mcp-server directory
2. Set the base directory to packages/mcp-server in your server settings under Github integration

Best Practices

1. Testing: Test your MCP server locally before deploying using MCP Inspector.
2. Configuration: Use the configSchema to properly define and validate your server's configuration options
3. Docker Optimization: Keep your Docker image size minimal by using appropriate base images and multi-stage builds