[HN Gopher] Show HN: We made an MCP server so Cursor can debug N...
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Show HN: We made an MCP server so Cursor can debug Node.js on its
own
Author : arthurgousset
Score : 37 points
Date : 2025-03-22 15:57 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npmjs.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npmjs.com)
| arthurgousset wrote:
| Cursor often gets into "dead loops" trying to fix code [1][2].
| But, Cursor also seems to get out of dead loops when it adds
| `console.log` statements everywhere.
|
| We thought: "What if Cursor could access Node.js at runtime?".
| That would save it from adding `console.log` everywhere, and
| still get out of dead loops.
|
| We looked into it and got Cursor to debug Node.js on its own.
|
| It's a prototype, but if you're interested in trying it out, we'd
| love some feedback!
|
| Github: github.com/hyperdrive-eng/mcp-nodejs-debugger
|
| ---
|
| References:
|
| [1]: "At this point I feel like giving up on Cursor and just
| accept that WE'RE NOT THERE YET." ~Source:
| https://forum.cursor.com/t/cursor-for-complex-projects/38911
|
| [2]: "We've all had the issue. You're trying to build a complex
| project with your AI companion. It runs into a dead loop, coding
| in circles, making suggestions it already tried that didn't
| work." ~Source:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTCoding/comments/1gz8fxb/solu...
| pkkkzip wrote:
| this doesnt really help get out of loops in my experience
|
| none of these agents or ide can fix the underlying issue with the
| blackbox
|
| until the blackbox is capable of genuine reasoning and awareness
|
| calculated brute force is our only path forward
| wordofx wrote:
| I used to run into dead loops until I changed the way I prompt
| cursor. Asking it to focus on 1 error at a time massively
| improves the success rate. Had an old project in node 10 project
| that hadn't been touched since ~2017 and after several attempts
| with cursor. Asked if to fix 1 issue at a time until it moved
| from node 10>12>14...>22 and after about 15 minutes it succeeded.
| That included updating all the dependencies and removing
| deprecated/dead/dropped packages and getting them to latest and
| updating Vue from 1 to 3.5
| flowerthoughts wrote:
| There's a facinating number of posts mentioning MCP in the last
| week or two. Many of them from young accounts, or accounts with a
| post years ago, then nothing, and suddenly MCP.
|
| MCP itself just seems to be JSON-RPC with a schema to be self-
| describing, so it's not really that interesting that it warrants
| one post per day. The web page touts it as the magic needed to
| ensure you don't have to write API adapters for your LLM uses.
| Well, except you need to write or use an MCP server to do the
| translation. So unless you're using one that already exists
| (though hundreds have been advertised on HN recently,) you're
| just shifting the problem by adding a layer of indirection.
|
| They also specifically say that authentication is something we'll
| work out later, so it seems none of these will have access to the
| data that actually has value.
|
| I have no idea about this account specifically, but I'm starting
| to suspect there's a bot ring somewhere.
| danielbln wrote:
| MCP is a handy way to announce tools to the LLM it can use to
| interface with a service, usually remote. I use local mcp
| servers to pull on (authed) slack, notion, grafana and a few
| more into an agent like Cline. I don't think the HN post
| frequency is some bot thing, just seems to be something that's
| sticking with people as more and more mcp servers pop up. Makes
| wiring stuff together for agents to use easy to reason about.
| _pdp_ wrote:
| I've been aware of MCP for a long time but recently I started
| hearing about it a lot more, even from customers - it is
| clearly a hype.
| mellosouls wrote:
| A long time - are you confusing it with something else? It
| was only published 3 months ago, which would be why it has
| recently become a thing.
|
| https://www.anthropic.com/news/model-context-protocol
| mdaniel wrote:
| Up to you, but there's actually a formal logging pathway[1] in
| MCP that has the potential to put this message somewhere that
| either of the two consumers[2] of your service could see it
| https://github.com/hyperdrive-eng/mcp-nodejs-debugger/blob/v...
|
| 1:
| https://spec.modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2024-11-0...
|
| 2: the person, and (while I don't have evidence of it) I also
| can't think why the LLM couldn't see the message, either
| mkw5053 wrote:
| I've been using Cursor extensively on TS projects and noticed a
| big improvement in speed and code quality by enforcing clear
| guardrails (strict types, linting, formatting) combined with
| rigorous TDD. When I hit an error or exception, I explicitly tell
| the agent to pause and first figure out the best way to debug and
| quickly pinpoint the root cause. This approach generally works
| well, provided I've decomposed the problem enough that we're
| debugging just one thing at a time (though that's not always
| trivial).
|
| I'm interested to try this out to see if or how much it speeds
| things up further.
| quectophoton wrote:
| MCP = Model Context Protocol
|
| (I didn't know what MCP was.)
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