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summary Cheatsheet for the various mcporter call argument syntaxes and best practices.
read_when
Designing or debugging tool invocation UX

Tool Calling Cheatsheet

mcporter accepts multiple argument styles so you can match whatever feels most natural in your shell or script. Every style feeds the same validation pipeline (schema-driven type coercion, required-field checks, enum hints), so pick the one that's easiest to type.

1. Inferred Call Command

mcporter linear.list_issues team=ENG
mcporter context7.resolve-library-id libraryName:value
mcporter firecrawl.scrape 'url: "https://example.com"'
  • Dotted tokens (server.tool) automatically run the call command.
  • Trailing arguments can use key=value, key:value, or key: value formats; multi-word values need normal shell quoting.
  • server=value / tool=value behave like their flag counterparts if you need to override the selector.

2. Explicit call + Flags

mcporter call linear.create_issue --team ENG --title "Bug report"
mcporter call chrome-devtools.take_snapshot output=markdown
mcporter call context7.resolve-library-id libraryName: value
  • Use --flag value when you prefer long-form CLI syntax.
  • Mixed forms are fine: mcporter call linear.create_issue --team ENG title=value due: tomorrow.
  • --args '{"title":"Bug"}' still ingests JSON payloads directly.

3. Function-Call Syntax

mcporter call 'linear.create_issue(title: "Bug", team: "ENG")'
mcporter 'context7.resolve-library-id(libraryName: "react")'
mcporter 'context7.resolve-library-id("react")'
  • Mirrors the pseudo-TypeScript signature printed by mcporter list.
  • You may omit labels and rely on the schema order—mcporter 'context7.resolve-library-id("react")' maps the first argument to libraryName automatically.
  • Supports nested objects/arrays and gives detailed parser errors when the expression is malformed.
  • Wrap the whole expression in quotes so the shell leaves parentheses/commas intact.

4. Mixed Server/Tool Overrides

mcporter call --server linear resolve_library_id libraryName=value
mcporter call --tool scrape firecrawl url=https://example.com
  • Pass --server / --tool when you want to reuse cached selectors or the command inference isn’t enough.
  • Anything after the selector uses the same unified key/value parsing.

5. Ad-hoc Servers

mcporter call https://mcp.deepwiki.com/sse.ask_question repoName=value question:"What's new?"
mcporter call --http-url https://mcp.example.com/mcp fetch_docs repoName=value
  • Bare URLs trigger ad-hoc server registration; you can still use all of the styles above for arguments.
  • Combine with --stdio "bun run ./server.ts" (plus --stdio-arg, --env, --cwd) for local transports.

Tips

  • Use mcporter list <server> to see parameter names, return types, and example invocations.
  • Optional fields hide by default; add --all-parameters when listing a server to reveal everything.
  • mcporter auth <server|url> accepts the same ad-hoc flags, so you can authenticate immediately after a 401 without editing config.