Mcphawk

MCPHawk is a new Logging & Monitoring solution for Model Context Protocol (MCP) traffic, providing deep visibility into MCP client-server interactions. It started off as a mix between Wireshark and mcpinspector, purpose-built for the MCP ecosystem, and is now slowly turning into something more.

Key Capabilities:

• Protocol-Aware Capture: Understands MCP's JSON-RPC 2.0 transport layer, capturing and reassembling messages from stdio pipes and HTTP streams
• Transport Agnostic: Monitors MCP traffic across all standard transports (stdio, HTTP Streaming, HTTP+SSE)
• Full Message Reconstruction: Advanced stream reassembly handles fragmented packets, chunked HTTP transfers, SSE streams, and stdio pipes

Core Features

🔍 MCP Protocol Analysis

• Complete JSON-RPC 2.0 Support: Correctly identifies and categorizes all MCP message types
  • Requests: Method calls with unique IDs for correlation
  • Responses: Success results and error responses with matching IDs
  • Notifications: Fire-and-forget method calls without IDs
  • Batch Operations: Support for JSON-RPC batch requests/responses
• Transport-Specific Handling: See MCP Transport Support table below for full details
  • Chunked Transfer: Handles HTTP chunked transfer encoding transparently
• Protocol Compliance: Validates JSON-RPC 2.0 structure and MCP-specific extensions

🚀 Advanced Capture Capabilities

• Auto-Discovery Mode: Intelligently detects MCP traffic on any port using pattern matching
• TCP Stream Reassembly: Reconstructs complete messages from fragmented packets
• Multi-Stream Tracking: Simultaneously monitors multiple MCP client-server connections
• IPv4/IPv6 Dual Stack: Native support for both IP protocols
• Zero-Copy Architecture: Efficient packet processing without client/server overhead

📊 Analysis & Visualization

• Real-Time Web Dashboard: Live traffic visualization with WebSocket updates
• Message Flow Visualization: Track request-response pairs using JSON-RPC IDs
• Traffic Statistics: Method frequency, error rates, response times
• Search & Filter: Query by method name, message type, content patterns
• Export Capabilities: Save captured sessions for offline analysis

🛠️ Developer Experience

• MCP Server Integration: Query captured data using MCP protocol itself
  • FastMCP-based implementation for maximum compatibility
  • Available tools: query_traffic, search_traffic, get_stats, list_methods
  • Supports both stdio and HTTP transports
• Multiple Interfaces:
  • Web UI for interactive exploration
  • CLI for scripting and automation
  • MCP server for programmatic access
• Flexible Deployment:
  • Standalone sniffer mode
  • Integrated web + sniffer
  • Historical log analysis without active capture

MCP Transport Support

Note: Raw TCP traffic with JSON-RPC is also captured and marked as "unknown" transport type

Comparison with Similar Tools

When to use each tool:

• MCPHawk: Passive monitoring, protocol analysis, debugging MCP implementations, understanding traffic patterns
• mcpinspector: Active testing, crafting requests, interactive debugging with proxy
• Wireshark: General network analysis, non-MCP protocols, packet-level inspection

TLS/HTTPS Limitations

MCPHawk captures unencrypted MCP traffic only. It cannot decrypt:

• HTTPS/WSS (WebSocket Secure) connections
• TLS-encrypted TCP connections
• Any SSL/TLS encrypted traffic

This tool is ideal for:

• 🛠️ Local MCP development - Debug your MCP server implementations
• 🔍 Understanding MCP protocol - See actual JSON-RPC message flow
• 🐛 Troubleshooting local tools - Monitor Claude Desktop, Cline, etc. with YOUR local MCP servers
• 📊 Development/staging environments - Where TLS is often disabled

Installation

For Users

# Install from PyPI
pip install mcphawk

# Or install directly from GitHub
pip install git+https://github.com/tech4242/mcphawk.git

Requirements

• macOS/Linux: Requires sudo for packet capture (standard for network sniffers)
• Python: 3.9 or higher
• Permissions: Must run with elevated privileges to access network interfaces

Quick Start

# Get help
mcphawk --help

# Get help for specific command
mcphawk sniff --help
mcphawk web --help

# Start web UI with auto-detect mode (requires sudo on macOS)
sudo mcphawk web --auto-detect

# Monitor MCP traffic on a specific port (console output)
sudo mcphawk sniff --port 3000

# Monitor multiple ports with a custom filter
sudo mcphawk sniff --filter "tcp port 3000 or tcp port 8080"

# Auto-detect MCP traffic on any port
sudo mcphawk sniff --auto-detect

# Start web UI with sniffer on specific port
sudo mcphawk web --port 3000

# Start web UI with custom filter for multiple ports
sudo mcphawk web --filter "tcp port 3000 or tcp port 8080"

# View historical logs only (no active sniffing)
sudo mcphawk web --no-sniffer

# Custom web server configuration
sudo mcphawk web --port 3000 --host 0.0.0.0 --web-port 9000

# Enable debug output for troubleshooting
sudo mcphawk sniff --port 3000 --debug
sudo mcphawk web --port 3000 --debug

# Wrap an MCP server to capture stdio traffic
mcphawk wrap /path/to/mcp-server --arg1 --arg2

# Example: Wrap Context7 MCP server to monitor Claude Desktop's documentation lookups
mcphawk wrap npx -y @upstash/context7-mcp@latest

# Claude Desktop config to use the wrapped version:
# {
#   "mcpServers": {
#     "context7": {
#       "command": "mcphawk",
#       "args": ["wrap", "npx", "-y", "@upstash/context7-mcp@latest"]
#     }
#   }
# }

# Start MCP server with Streamable HTTP transport (default)
mcphawk mcp --transport http --mcp-port 8765

# Start MCP server with stdio transport (for Claude Desktop integration)
mcphawk mcp --transport stdio

# Start sniffer with integrated MCP server (HTTP transport)
sudo mcphawk sniff --port 3000 --with-mcp --mcp-transport http

# Start web UI with integrated MCP server
sudo mcphawk web --port 3000 --with-mcp --mcp-transport http --mcp-port 8765

MCP Server Integration

MCPHawk includes a built-in MCP server, allowing you to query captured traffic through the Model Context Protocol itself. This creates powerful possibilities:

• AI-Powered Analysis: Connect Claude or other LLMs to analyze traffic patterns
• Automated Monitoring: Build agents that detect anomalies or specific behaviors
• Integration Testing: Programmatically verify MCP interactions in CI/CD pipelines

Available Tools

The MCP server exposes these tools for traffic analysis:

Transport Options

HTTP Transport (Development & Testing)

The HTTP transport uses Server-Sent Events (SSE) for streaming responses:

# Start MCP server
mcphawk mcp --transport http --mcp-port 8765

# Initialize session (note: returns SSE stream)
curl -N -X POST http://localhost:8765/mcp \
  -H 'Accept: text/event-stream' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"initialize","params":{"protocolVersion":"2024-11-05","capabilities":{},"clientInfo":{"name":"test","version":"1.0"}},"id":1}'

# Example response (SSE format):
# event: message
# data: {"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"result":{"protocolVersion":"2024-11-05",...}}

stdio Transport (Production & Claude Desktop)

For Claude Desktop integration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcphawk": {
      "command": "mcphawk",
      "args": ["mcp", "--transport", "stdio"]
    }
  }
}

The stdio transport follows the standard MCP communication pattern:

1. Client sends initialize request
2. Server responds with capabilities
3. Client sends initialized notification
4. Normal tool calls can proceed

See examples/mcp_sdk_client.py for HTTP client example or examples/stdio_client.py for stdio communication.

Platform Support

Tested Platforms

• ✅ macOS (Apple Silicon & Intel) - Fully tested
• ✅ Linux (Ubuntu, Debian) - Fully tested
• ⚠️ Windows - Experimental (Scapy should work but untested)

Known Limitations

• Requires elevated privileges (sudo) on macOS/Linux for packet capture
• Limited to localhost/loopback interface monitoring
• Cannot decrypt TLS/HTTPS traffic (WSS, HTTPS)
• IPv6 support requires explicit interface configuration on some systems
• High traffic volumes (>1000 msgs/sec) may impact performance

Troubleshooting

Permission Denied Error:

# On macOS/Linux, use sudo:
sudo mcphawk web --auto-detect

No Traffic Captured:

• Ensure the MCP server/client is using localhost (127.0.0.1 or ::1)
• Check if traffic is on the expected port
• Try auto-detect mode to find MCP traffic: --auto-detect
• Verify traffic is unencrypted (not HTTPS/TLS)
• On macOS, ensure Terminal has permission to capture packets in System Preferences

SSE/HTTP Responses Not Showing:

• Confirm the server uses standard SSE format (event: message\ndata: {...}\n\n)
• Check if responses use chunked transfer encoding
• Enable debug mode to see detailed packet analysis: --debug

Potential Upcoming Features

Vote for features by opening a GitHub issue!

• Auto-detect MCP traffic - Automatically discover MCP traffic on any port without prior configuration
• MCP Server Interface - Expose captured traffic via MCP server for AI agents to query and analyze traffic patterns
• Stdio capture - Transparent process wrapper to capture stdin/stdout communication
• Protocol Version Detection - Identify and display MCP protocol version from captured traffic
• Smart Search & Filtering - Search by method name, params, or any JSON field with regex support
• Performance Analytics - Request/response timing, method frequency charts, and latency distribution
• Export & Share - Export sessions as JSON/CSV, generate shareable links, create HAR-like files
• Test Generation - Auto-generate test cases from captured traffic
• Error Analysis - Highlight errors, group similar issues, show error trends
• Session Management - Save/load capture sessions, compare sessions side-by-side
• Interactive Replay - Click any request to re-send it, edit and replay captured messages
• Real-time Alerts - Alert on specific methods or error patterns with webhook support
• Visualization - Sequence diagrams, resource heat maps, method dependency graphs

... and a few more off the deep end:

• TLS/HTTPS Support (MITM Proxy Mode) - Optional man-in-the-middle proxy with certificate installation for encrypted traffic
• External Decryption Integration - Import decrypted streams from Wireshark, Chrome DevTools, or SSLKEYLOGFILE

For Developers

# Set up Python environment
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate  # On Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate

# Install backend dependencies
pip3 install -r requirements-dev.txt
pip3 install -e .

# Install frontend dependencies and build
cd frontend
npm install
npm run build
cd ..

# Run tests
python3 -m pytest -v

Some Vue options:

# Option 1: Use make (recommended)
make dev  # Runs both frontend and backend

# Option 2: Run separately
# Terminal 1 - Frontend with hot reload
cd frontend && npm run dev

# Terminal 2 - Backend
mcphawk web --port 3000

# Option 3: Watch mode
cd frontend && npm run build:watch  # Auto-rebuild on changes
mcphawk web --port 3000           # In another terminal