Vibe Directory methodology (2026)
Where entries come from
- MCP servers: records from the official MCP Registry (pulled 2026-10-27) that are in active status, declare a clean https streamable-HTTP endpoint, a public repository URL, a website URL and a description of at least 30 characters. Name, description, version, repository and endpoint are copied from the record; we add nothing to them. To keep any one publisher from flooding the list, publishers with more than five qualifying servers are excluded, and the rest are sampled deterministically (a fixed hash of the server name, not editorial choice). A shortlist of well-known vendor servers is always probed. Only servers that answered the first probe (working, or reachable but needing sign-in) are listed; endpoints that failed the first probe are not. The shortlist includes Vibe Shipped’s own server, which is ranked by the same rule as every other entry.
- AI agents: our existing Agent Toolbox and Harness comparison data. Each value is from the official site or docs, or the GitHub API, on the date shown.
- Skills: SKILL.md files from their publishers’ repositories, with the file as the source.
What “Verified working” means
Once a day a verifier sends each MCP server one initialize request and one tools/list request, with a 12-second timeout, and records up or down, response time, tool count, tool names and a timestamp. It identifies itself as VibeShippedVerifier/1.0 (+https://vibeshipped.io/directory), probes one server per host at a time, and never calls any tool. “Verified working on <date>” means both calls succeeded on that date. A server that answers 401 or 403 with an authentication challenge is shown as “reachable, sign-in required”: we can see it is an MCP endpoint but cannot list its tools, so it does not count as verified working. Every server we have ever found is probed every day, including ones that were down. A server is listed after one successful probe (answering, or answering with a sign-in challenge) and unlisted after three consecutive failed probes; unlisted servers keep being probed and return to the directory as soon as one probe succeeds. Until a server is unlisted, a failing server stays listed with the failure and the last date it worked. The full probe history is stored in a database.
Ranking
Within a category, entries sort by (1) latest verification: verified working, then reachable but sign-in required, then failing; (2) share of daily checks that passed; (3) number of sourced facts attached to the entry; (4) median response time of passing checks; (5) name. Nothing else counts. Rankings are never for sale: sponsors and paid plans cannot change an entry's position.
There is no payment, sponsorship, claim or plan that affects position. The planned Builder plan (verified badge, downtime alerts, agent-demand analytics) will not either.
Limits
Categories are assigned by keyword rules over the entry’s own name and description, so some entries land in “Other” or a near category. One successful probe shows an endpoint speaks MCP and lists tools; it does not prove the tools are good or safe. A listing is not an endorsement. Publisher text is shown as the publisher wrote it. Corrections: site methodology and corrections, or claim the listing.