It is foreseeable that various types of MCP servers will emerge and expand rapidly, alongside CLI tools that facilitate their discovery and management. Noteworthy companies, such as Heroku, are advancing swiftly in this domain, and I intend to explore Heroku’s MCP server as a case study, in conjunction with the official documentation published by Anthropic, which provides guidance on building MCP servers.

In Windsurf, the setting is

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "heroku": {
      "command": "npx -y @heroku/mcp-server",
      "env": {
        "HEROKU_API_KEY": "<YOUR_HEROKU_AUTH_TOKEN>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Available Tools

Application Management

• list_apps – List all Heroku apps. You can filter apps by personal, collaborator, team, or space.
• get_app_info – Get detailed information about an app, including its configuration, dynos, and add-ons.
• create_app – Create a new app with customizable settings for region, team, and space.
• rename_app – Rename an existing app.
• transfer_app – Transfer ownership of an app to another user or team.
• deploy_to_heroku – Deploy projects to Heroku with an app.json configuration, supporting team deployments, private spaces, and environment setups.

Process & Dyno Management

• ps_list – List all dynos for an app.
• ps_scale – Scale the number of dynos up or down, or resize dynos.
• ps_restart – Restart specific dynos, process types, or all dynos.

Add-ons

• list_addons – List all add-ons for all apps or for a specific app.
• get_addon_info – Get detailed information about a specific add-on.
• create_addon – Provision a new add-on for an app.

Maintenance & Logs

• maintenance_on – Enable maintenance mode for an app.
• maintenance_off – Disable maintenance mode for an app.
• get_app_logs – View application logs.

Pipeline Management

• pipelines_create – Create a new pipeline.
• pipelines_promote – Promote apps to the next stage in a pipeline.
• pipelines_list – List available pipelines.
• pipelines_info – Get detailed pipeline information.

Team & Space Management

• list_teams – List teams you belong to.
• list_private_spaces – List available spaces.

PostgreSQL Database Management

• pg_psql – Execute SQL queries against the Heroku PostgreSQL database.
• pg_info – Display detailed database information.
• pg_ps – View active queries and execution details.
• pg_locks – View database locks and identify blocking transactions.
• pg_outliers – Identify resource-intensive queries.
• pg_credentials – Manage database credentials and access.
• pg_kill – Terminate specific database processes.
• pg_maintenance – Show database maintenance information.
• pg_backups – Manage database backups and schedules.
• pg_upgrade – Upgrade PostgreSQL to a newer version.

Details of building up a server: For Server Developers – Model Context Protocol

What about building up a client: For Client Developers – Model Context Protocol

Next step is to build up domain related MCP servers too.