MCP Chaos Rig

A local MCP server that breaks on demand. Test your client against auth failures, disappearing tools, flaky responses, and token expiry, all from a web UI.

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The problem

You're building an MCP client. You need to test OAuth flows, token refresh, tool discovery, error handling, and session lifecycle. Production servers don't fail on command. You need a server that does.

What Chaos Rig does

Run a local MCP server where you control everything:

• Break authentication: force 401s and 500s mid-session, expire tokens on demand, reject refresh tokens
• Break tools: disable tools to trigger tools/changed, switch schema versions live
• Break reliability: add random latency, make tool calls fail at configurable rates
• See everything: live request log shows inbound JSON-RPC calls and outbound SSE responses, with click-to-expand bodies

Test scenarios

Scenario	How to test it
OAuth 2.1 consent flow	Use the interactive consent page: approve, decline, invalid code, tampered state
Fixed header auth	Switch to Headers mode, configure key-value pairs, verify client sends them
Missing/wrong headers	Send requests with missing or mismatched headers — 401 with details
Token rejection mid-session	Toggle "Reject OAuth" to 401 or 500 while client is connected
Token expiry and refresh	Set access token TTL to a short value, watch the client refresh
Reject refresh tokens	Toggle "Reject refresh tokens" to force re-authentication
Wrong client refreshing	Enable "Enforce refresh token ownership" — catches clients that lose credentials and re-register
Scope discovery conflict	Set different scopes in metadata vs WWW-Authenticate header, test which the client trusts
Tool disappearing	Disable a tool in the Tools tab. Clients receive tools/changed
Tool schema changing	Switch echo or add between v1 and v2 schemas
Flaky tool calls	Set failure rate 0-100%. Failed calls return isError: true
Slow responses	Enable slow mode with configurable latency range
PKCE code exchange	OAuth consent page offers "Wrong Code" and "Wrong State" options
Database-backed tools	CRUD operations on a real SQLite contact database

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Quick start

npx mcp-chaos-rig

Control panel at localhost:4100/ui, MCP endpoint at http://localhost:4100/mcp. Requires Node 20+.

If you prefer a global install:

npm install -g mcp-chaos-rig
mcp-chaos-rig

Or run from source:

git clone https://github.com/Typewise/mcp-chaos-rig.git
cd mcp-chaos-rig
npm install
npm run dev

Remote access

If your production environment needs to reach Chaos Rig, expose it via a tunnel (ngrok, Cloudflare Tunnel, etc.) and set BASE_URL so OAuth redirects resolve correctly:

BASE_URL=https://your-tunnel.example.dev npx mcp-chaos-rig

Auth state

All state is in-memory and resets on restart. Bearer starts with token test-token-123 (valid until changed). OAuth tokens expire per TTL. Refresh tokens track ownership per client when enabled. After restart, do one refresh with ownership off to re-seed, then turn it on.

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Control panel tabs

Server

Configure auth mode, slow mode (random latency), and flaky tools (% failure rate).

Auth mode	Behavior
None	All requests pass through
Bearer	Requires Authorization: Bearer test-token-123
OAuth 2.1	Full authorization flow with interactive consent page

Bearer and OAuth modes support fault injection: force 401 or 500 responses to test error handling.

OAuth mode adds controls for access token TTL, refresh token rejection, and refresh token ownership enforcement. OAuth endpoints are listed in a collapsible section.

Tools

Toggle tools on/off. Disabling sends tools/changed to connected clients. Some tools (echo, add) support version switching.

Available tools:

• echo: returns your message (v2 adds format options)
• add: sums two numbers (v2 accepts an array)
• get-time: current server time as ISO 8601
• random-number: random integer in a range
• reverse: reverses a string
• list-contacts, search-contacts, create-contact, update-contact, delete-contact: SQLite CRUD

Contacts

View and reset the SQLite database backing the contact tools. Starts with three seed records.

Log

Live request log showing inbound requests and outbound SSE responses. Displays timestamp, source (mcp/auth/sse), method, status, JSON-RPC method, tool name, and arguments. Click any truncated body or args line to expand it. Keeps last 200 entries.

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OAuth consent page

When auth mode is OAuth, the authorization endpoint shows an interactive consent page:

Button	Result
Approve	Redirects with valid authorization code
Decline	Redirects with error=access_denied
Wrong Code	Redirects with invalid code (token exchange fails)
Wrong State	Redirects with tampered state parameter

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Links

• npm package
• GitHub repository
• MIT License