Context file resources improvements

[green-coder]

The MCP server serves non-existent files as resources. For instance, we can add a missing CLAUDE.md file, it will result in this exception's text being included as file content.

I suggest these steps for improvements (note: the following is hand-typed, not AI-generated :-) ):

1. Have a folder for AI contexts so that the user does not have to follow the current convention and can have its own filenames. e.g. ai-context/UIX.md.
2. Have CLAUDE.md and ai-context/ be the default green-list of resources to serve.
3. Have a background process watch for changes for the files and file patterns in the above green-list, and inform the AI when they change (documentation at https://modelcontextprotocol.io/docs/concepts/resources#resource-updates).

[bhauman]

I'm leery of getting into config and default settings at this point in this project and would prefer that folks experiment with setups to see what actually works for them. I regret even the small amount config that I added.

It's very easy to point an LLM at the clojure-mcp.main and clojure-mcp.core to create a custom server that supports your workflow:

https://github.com/bhauman/clojure-mcp?tab=readme-ov-file#%EF%B8%8F-customization

We are in a very dynamic moment with AI Assisted coding, so I'd prefer to provide the more expressive solution for now.

We can perhaps have a suite of 3 or 4 mains as usable examples of different setups to handle prompts, tools and resources.

What do others think?

[bhauman]

Actually my response to this makes me think I should write a book on "how to not run an open source project".

I think the output you are seeing is intentional debugging code bc the resource was silently failing when there is no resource to be found. Just no response at all, which was confusing.

[bhauman]

OK I just tested removing the error message for the missing resource files, and as I remembered, absolutely no feedback from the UI when a resource doesn't return anything. You click the resource then absolutely nothing happens, which may be better???

[bhauman]

But I'm warming to the idea of moving things to a default (.)ai-context directory in main.clj

[green-coder]

I was thinking that the problem was not so much how we report that something is wrong (your way might well be the most practical) but rather that we are proposing the user to include a context file which does not exist, hence my suggestion to find a way to inform the MCP host (the client) dynamically about which resources are available.

I think .ai-context/ would work if we only want programs to see it, but if we want users to see it then ai-context/ seems better.

[bhauman]

yeah so polling available files? Doesn't sound great but is doable except that ...

Also I've had zero luck dynamically adding tools, prompts or resources and having it reflected in the Claude UI.

Add or remove a tool dynamically from/to the mcp-server and the notification is absolutely ignored. Not what you'd expect.