Remote vs local MCP servers

Local / installable

Runs on your machine or in your infra (npm, PyPI, git, containers). You care about package deprecation, repo health, and what the process can touch.

Remote / hosted

The vendor runs the endpoint. You care whether it is alive, how it authenticates, and whether the docs repo is a red herring.

Census handling

We probe remotes with real MCP initialize handshakes. Auth challenges can count as alive. A stale marketing repo with a live remote should not be judged only as “no push.”

Practical tip

In lookup, use the run as chips to see hosted vs package shapes at a glance.