The Model Context Protocol (MCP) standardizes how large language model applications communicate with external tools, but leaves the application side unspecified: unlike traditional dependencies resolved through package managers, developers integrating MCP servers face no conventions for configuration, communication, or human oversight. This ecosystem is also under-researched, with existing work focused on servers rather than the applications consuming them. We conduct a large-scale study of 1,723 MCPApps mined from GitHub. We first derive MCPAppTax from a representative sample, then use an LLM-assisted pipeline to apply it across the full dataset, characterizing server integration across configuration, SDK use, and human-in-the-loop mechanisms. Our results show that the ecosystem has converged on some practices but not others: most MCPApps configure servers using files (85.2%) and use an official SDK (81.1%) to communicate with servers, yet no naming convention has emerged for configuration files. Human oversight diverges most, logging (90.8%) and enable/disable controls (77.2%) are common, but only 37.2% gate tool execution behind a blocking approval step, leaving the LLM able to invoke any enabled tool unconditionally in most MCPApps.
Muhammad Hamza Arshad Majeed, May Mahmoud, Sarah Nadi· 0 citations
Third-party libraries are essential to modern software development, but updating them can introduce changes that break the project build. Manually diagnosing and repairing such failures in continuous integration (CI) pipelines is time-consuming and delays the adoption of security and feature updates. In this paper, we present DependaFix, a GitHub App that automates the end-to-end repair of Java projects whose builds break after dependency version updates. DependaFix builds on Byam, an automated repair tool based on large language models (LLMs), by integrating the repair process into GitHub's CI/CD workflow for pull requests. DependaFix detects failing dependency version-update pull requests and attempts to repair them. It extracts build context from CI logs and local Maven builds, delegates the repair to Byam, and creates a pull request for the repair if the fix succeeds. We demonstrate, through an example, that DependaFix can automate the repair process, potentially reducing the manual effort required by developers to diagnose and fix dependency-update failures in pull requests.
Enock Mecheo, May Mahmoud, Sarah Nadi· SIGSOFT FSE Companion· 0 citations
