Add configurable MCP support for ReSpec report workflows

[danielcamposramos]

Summary

This PR adds a configurable stdio MCP companion for ReSpec so AI tools and editors can scaffold, preflight, validate, and build reports from repo-local profiles.

What Changed

• add respec-mcp stdio entrypoints and MCP core/server modules
• add repo-local profile/config discovery via respec-mcp.config.json and respec-mcp/profiles/*.json
• add Docker runtime for Node 24 + Chromium environments
• add focused MCP tests
• add LLM authoring guidance for W3C and Community Group report workflows, including standards-transition patterns and examples
• expose the authoring guidance path in MCP responses so clients can discover and apply it

Why

The goal is to let Community Groups and similar spec repositories keep local policy and templates while reusing one upstream MCP runtime. The added authoring guidance is meant to make the MCP useful for real standards-oriented writing and review, not only for rendering HTML.

Validation

• docker build -t respec-mcp:local .
• docker run --rm --entrypoint node respec-mcp:local /app/node_modules/jasmine/bin/jasmine.js --random=false /app/tests/mcp.cjs

[sidvishnoi]

Can you share a video demo to show how it works?

[danielcamposramos]

Can you share a video demo to show how it works?

Hi @sidvishnoi,

Thanks for looking at this. We built this MCP as a side project within the PM-KR Community Group to support our own report authoring workflow. The group's focus is on the main specification work, so we don't have the bandwidth to record a video demo right now — but the MCP is functional and has already been used in practice.

How to use it:
The server runs over stdio, so any MCP-aware client can connect.

VSCode agents (Claude Code, Cline, GitHub Copilot, etc.) — add to your MCP settings:

{
"mcpServers": {
"respec-mcp": {
"command": "node",
"args": ["tools/respec-mcp.js", "--repo-root", "/path/to/your/spec-repo"],
"transport": "stdio"
}
}
}

Docker (includes Node 24 + headless Chromium for respec_build):

docker build -t respec-mcp:local .
docker run --rm -i respec-mcp:local

CLI (directly, for scripting or CI):

node tools/respec-mcp.js --repo-root /path/to/your/spec-repo

Once connected, the agent gets five tools:
respec_list_profiles, respec_scaffold, respec_preflight, respec_validate, and respec_build.
Each consuming repo provides its own respec-mcp.config.json and respec-mcp/profiles/*.json to define allowed statuses, required sections, forbidden phrases, templates, and build paths — so group-specific policy stays in the repo, not in the MCP server.

Live artifact
The PM-KR Standards Track Transition Report was drafted using this setup with LLM assistance (Codex). The PM-KR repo at w3c-cg/pm-kr has a working respec-mcp.config.json and profile that can serve as a reference for other groups.

Happy to answer any questions about the implementation or integration patterns.

[marcoscaceres]

Will take a look soon…