R Observatory: Metrics for mcptools version 1.0.3

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

mcptools

1.0.3Package record

Model Context Protocol Servers and Clients

1packages dependsuggested by 7

20.8Kdownloads / year

79.3%test coverage

13/13flavors OK

Overview

About

Maintained by Simon CouchCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗Website ↗Issues ↗Declared funder: Posit Software, PBC

Implements the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Users can start 'R'-based servers, serving functions as tools for large language models to call before responding to the user in MCP-compatible apps like 'Claude Desktop' and 'Claude Code', with options to run those tools inside of interactive 'R' sessions. On the other end, when 'R' is the client via the 'ellmer' package, users can register tools from third-party MCP servers to integrate additional context into chats.

Changes in 1.0.3

Fix a test that failed on CRAN M1mac machines.

From NEWS.md in the release

Install

R (CRAN)pak (dev)Ubuntu (r2u)Fedora (COPR)openSUSE (OBS)

install.packages("mcptools", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")

Installs the current CRAN release. Prebuilt binaries on Windows and macOS.

if (!requireNamespace("pak", quietly = TRUE))
  install.packages("pak", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")
pak::pak("posit-dev/mcptools")

Development version from posit-dev/mcptools. Installs pak first if it is not already available.

Release

# enable cranapt (r2u) if it is not already set up, then install
grep -rqs r2u.stat.illinois.edu /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ \
  || curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eddelbuettel/r2u/master/inst/scripts/add_cranapt_noble.sh | sudo bash
sudo apt install -y r-cran-mcptools

Fast Ubuntu binaries via r2u (no compilation). The cranapt setup runs once and is skipped when it is already enabled. We list this channel from recorded r2u download activity rather than from a live index of the repository, so treat it as last known rather than guaranteed.

bspm (used by r2u) also needs make: sudo apt install make

# enable the iucar/cran COPR if it is not already present, then install
ls /etc/yum.repos.d/*iucar*cran*.repo >/dev/null 2>&1 \
  || sudo dnf copr enable -y iucar/cran
sudo dnf install -y R-CRAN-mcptools

RPMs from the iucar/cran COPR, rebuilt from CRAN.

For install.packages() integration in R, also: sudo dnf install R-CoprManager

# add the autoCRAN OBS repo (Tumbleweed) if it is missing, then install
zypper -q lr | grep -qi autoCRAN \
  || sudo zypper addrepo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/R:/autoCRAN/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/devel:languages:R:autoCRAN.repo
sudo zypper install -y R-mcptools

RPMs auto-built from CRAN on openSUSE OBS (Tumbleweed). We list this channel from recorded autoCRAN download activity rather than from a live index of the repository, so treat it as last known rather than guaranteed.

Health

CRAN checks

13OK

CRAN check page ↗

Slowest check: 1.7 min · r-oldrel-windows-x86_64

Status changes

OK13 OK2026-08-05
NOTE12 OK, 1 NOTE2026-08-01
OK14 OK2026-03-10

Advisories

none known

How this is measured·How advisories are found

Documentation

In release 1.0.3

READMEYes · 534 wordsVignettesYes · 1 · dynamicNEWSYes · 100% structured · mentions 1.0.3Citation fileNoWebsiteYes · pkgdown

Help pages: 3 (1 internal)includes a package overview page
Examples that run: 100%2 run in a plain check (1 of them under a condition)
Exported functions with examples: 100%
Documented parameters: 92%
Return-value docs: 100%
Help pages citing references: 0%

Vignettes (1)

R as an MCP server HTML

How these are measured

Downloads

20.8K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #2,465 · ~57/day · ~1.7K/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

2.6K30 days

6.6K90 days

20.8K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on1.1K r2u2 autocran

How downloads are counted

Repository

posit-dev/mcptools ↗Organization: posit-dev

203Stars

23Forks

20Open issues

4Open PRs

8Releases

225Commits

10Commit identities

mcp-serverr

225 commits · Last activity 2026-10-20 · +3.6% stars, 30d · Default branch at 1.0.3.9000, ahead of CRAN 1.0.3 (checked 2026-10-21)

Responsiveness

How these are sampled

PRs merged (all time): 92%
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed issues: 6
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed PRs: 0

Stars over time

2025-10-23 · 1262026-10-22 · 203

How these are measured

PracticesBeta

10 development-tooling and community-health practices detected across 4 families in the upstream repository

Checks run against github.com/posit-dev/mcptools on 2026-10-21.

Continuous integration (2)

GitHub ActionsR CMD check workflow

The R CMD check workflow runs on Linux, macOS and Windows, and on R-devel

Docs source (4)

README.Rmdpkgdown

GitHub Pages site last deployed 2026-10-20 · The repository has a site deploy workflow

pkgdown site last built 2026-09-28

CRAN release process (1)

cran-comments.md

Lint, format, editor (3)

AirVS CodeRStudio project

How this is detected·Detection ruleset v4 (2026-10-20)

AI coding toolsBeta

This repository shows signs of AI coding tools.

Claude Codefirst seen 2025-06-06
Seen in the repository: CLAUDE.md
Named in .Rbuildignore: .claude, CLAUDE.md
Named in .gitignore: .claude

Shared conventions any agent may read, so they name no particular tool.

Seen in the repository: AGENTS.md

From outside contributors

Claude Code
Pull requests: 1 from outside contributors, first on 2026-09-25, 1 from forks

How this is detected·Detection ruleset v4 (updated 2026-09-27)

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

16 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Installing mcptools adds 31 packages (21 with compiled code, 19 MB of source tarballs). Heaviest: promises 3.1 MB, ellmer 3.0 MB, Rcpp 1.8 MB.

Depends (1)

R >= 4.1.0

Imports (11)

cli ellmer httpuv httr2 jsonlite nanonext openssl processx promises rlang yaml

LinkingTo (0)

none

Suggests (5)

callr knitr rmarkdown testthat withr

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

1direct

0indirect

Imports 1

Suggested by 7

Depends, Imports or LinkingTo, most downloaded first

btw

Suggests, most downloaded first

ragnar ritalic AutoDeskR ReliaGrowR tidyprompt ReliaPlotR PRA

How these are counted

Code & Tests

People & History

People (4)

Simon Couch

Author, Maintainer since 0.1.0 (2025)

Winston Chang

Author

Charlie Gao

Author

Posit Software, PBC

Copyright holder, Funder

Releases (8)

Pick two releases to compare their code metrics.

1.0.3Latest
record
2026-08-22 · current release · diff ↗
1.0.2
record
2026-08-22 · diff ↗
1.0.1
record
2026-07-27 · diff ↗
1.0.0
record
2026-07-02 · diff ↗
R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
0.2.1
record
2026-03-17 · diff ↗
0.2.0
record
2025-10-29 · diff ↗
0.1.1
record
2025-09-08 · diff ↗
0.1.0
record
2025-07-18
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11

Package metadata

First published: 2025-07-18
Total releases: 8 / 1 yrs
License: MIT + file LICENSE OSI
Minimum R: ≥ 4.1.0
Download size: 746 KB

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' preferred citation:

citation("mcptools")

Format

Couch, S., Posit Software, PBC, Chang, W., & Gao, C. (2026). mcptools: Model Context Protocol Servers and Clients (Version 1.0.3) [Computer software]. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.mcptools

This package has no citation file, so citation() returns this entry built from DESCRIPTION.

Cite the R Observatory

For a number measured here: a download total, a coverage figure, an archival date.

Format

APA

Balamuta, J. J. (2026). R Observatory: Metrics for mcptools version 1.0.3 [Data set]. HJJB, LLC. Data release v2026-10-25. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21843040

From data release v2026-10-25, which the citation names so these numbers can be found later. More on citing and the projects behind them.

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