Harness certification (mokata-mcp on other agents)

mokata's MCP server (mokata-mcp) is meant to work in any MCP client. This page says what "works" means for four clients — Cursor, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI and Copilot CLI — and how that gets checked.

Status: no client is certified yet. The current results are in harness-cert-matrix.json. Every cell reads untested until an owner runs the checklist below with the real client and records the result.

The criteria

id	name	the server passes when…
C1	config	mokata setup <harness> writes an MCP entry for server mokata into the client's own config file
C2	starts	the server launched from that entry completes MCP initialize over stdio
C3	tools	tools/list returns the tool set this mokata registers, including status, remember and recall (any mismatch is version skew)
C4	read	the read tool status answers without error and reports this mokata's version
C5	gate	the gated write remember will not commit without a human-minted approval. A call with no id comes back proposed, a model-typed approve=true writes nothing, and a forged proposal id is refused
C6	memory	the memory round-trip works: propose, then a human runs mokata approve <id> in a terminal, then the redeem commits, then recall returns the value. Using the same approval a second time is refused

A client is certified only when all six criteria have a recorded pass, and each pass carries the client version, the person who recorded it and a date. manual is not a pass.

Where setup stands per client

client	mokata setup target	MCP config	C1 today
Cursor	cursor	<project>/.cursor/mcp.json, written by setup	can pass
Gemini CLI	gemini	<project>/.gemini/settings.json, written by setup	can pass
Codex CLI	codex	~/.codex/config.toml, registered by hand	manual
Copilot CLI	copilot	~/.copilot/mcp-config.json, registered by hand	manual

Two kinds of evidence

1. The local contract suite. It proves the server's side and needs no third-party client. A minimal stdio MCP client built into mokata (mokata.harness_cert) runs C1–C6 against a scratch repo wired by mokata setup. CI runs it as tests/test_d12_harness_cert_matrix.py. You can also run it by hand:

python scripts/harness_cert.py contract all            # this interpreter's server
python scripts/harness_cert.py contract cursor --use-config   # the command the config names

A green contract run does not certify a client. It shows what any conforming client would see, and it never writes to the matrix. To stand in for the human approval, it runs mokata approve <id> --yes in a separate process.

1. The owner's checklist. This is what the matrix records. Run it with the real client:

python scripts/harness_cert.py checklist gemini        # the run sheet
python scripts/harness_cert.py record gemini C3 pass --client-version 0.9.0 --by <you>
python scripts/harness_cert.py show                    # the matrix

record will not save a pass that is missing the client version, the recorder or the date. If the matrix file can't be parsed, record stops with an error instead of overwriting it.