tbd
A small Clojure HTTP API built on Ring (Jetty) and
reitit, with a ClojureScript
re-frame front end (ui/), Swagger UI docs, unit tests,
dockerized integration tests, and joint line coverage.
Requirements
- Docker, for the integration tests and the
script/docker-*tasks (all CI needs) - For running tasks natively (optional): Clojure CLI (tools.deps) with JDK 21+, Node 20+ (22.22+ for the UI tests; with a JDK) for the UI build, and Babashka for
script/coverage-report
Running
script/ui-build # compile the UI (once, and after UI changes)
script/server [port]
The server listens on port 3000 by default; pass a port argument or set PORT to change it
(the argument wins):
script/server 8080
PORT=8080 script/server
This is a thin wrapper around clojure -X:run, which also honors PORT. Then open
http://localhost:3000 for the UI. Without script/ui-build the server still starts, but /
shows a placeholder.
Or build and run the container:
docker build -t tbd .
docker run --rm -p 3000:3000 tbd
API
| Method | Path | Description |
|---|---|---|
GET |
/ |
The UI: an HTML shell that loads the compiled ClojureScript from /js/main.js |
GET |
/api/ping |
Health check, returns pong |
GET |
/api/add?x=2&y=3 |
Adds two numbers: {:result 5} (EDN by default, see Formats) (400 if either is missing or not a number) |
POST, DELETE |
/mcp |
The MCP server (JSON-RPC over Streamable HTTP; DELETE ends a session; GET is 405). Needs an OAuth access token (401 without one) |
GET |
/.well-known/oauth-protected-resource, /.well-known/oauth-authorization-server |
The MCP OAuth discovery documents (RFC 9728 and 8414) |
POST |
/oauth/register |
Dynamic client registration (RFC 7591) for MCP clients |
GET, POST |
/oauth/authorize |
Where an MCP client sends the user's browser: Gitea login if needed, then a consent page |
POST |
/oauth/token |
Trades an authorization code (with its PKCE verifier) or a refresh token for tokens |
POST |
/api/chat |
Login required. An AG-UI run: body a RunAgentInput ({"messages": [{"id": "m1", "role": "user", "content": "hi"}], ...}, the conversation so far, 1 to 40 messages of up to 8000 characters, roles user, assistant or tool; optionally "tools", the page's tools as AG-UI describes them: see the chatbot's tools, and "context", ambient information for the run — the id of the UI page the user is on travels as {"description": "page", "value": "tic-tac-toe"}) sends it to the chatbot's agent and streams the reply back as AG-UI server-sent events (text/event-stream): RUN_STARTED, then TEXT_MESSAGE_START/TEXT_MESSAGE_CONTENT/TEXT_MESSAGE_END for the reply, REASONING_MESSAGE_START/_CONTENT/_END for the model's reasoning, TOOL_CALL_START/_ARGS/_END if it asks for tools to be called, and last RUN_FINISHED or RUN_ERROR. Failures before the run starts are ordinary errors: 400 for an invalid input, 502 if the LLM server can't be reached or refuses, 503 if LMSTUDIO_URL isn't set |
POST |
/a2a |
The A2A server: JSON-RPC 2.0, message/send only (no streaming; see below). Needs an OAuth access token, the same one an MCP client uses (401 without one) |
GET |
/.well-known/agent-card.json |
The A2A server's AgentCard: its name, url, capabilities and skills |
GET |
/api-docs |
Swagger UI |
GET |
/swagger.json |
OpenAPI/Swagger spec |
GET |
/auth/login |
Starts the Gitea OAuth login (redirects to Gitea) |
GET |
/auth/callback |
OAuth redirect target: completes the login, sets the session cookie, redirects to / |
POST |
/auth/logout |
Ends the session |
GET |
/auth/me |
The logged-in user, {:login "alice" :id 7 :admin? true} (401 if not logged in) |
GET |
/api/todos |
Login required. Your todos: {:todos [{:id "3f2b8c1e-5a47-4d0e-9b6a-1c2d3e4f5a6b" :owner-id 7 :title "buy milk" :done false :created-at 1700000000000 :updated-at 1700000000000}]} |
POST |
/api/todos |
Login required. Body {"title": "buy milk"} creates a todo and returns it with 201 (400 if the title is blank or over 200 characters) |
GET |
/api/todos/:id |
Login required. One todo (404 if it doesn't exist or isn't yours) |
PATCH |
/api/todos/:id |
Login required. Body with title and/or done ({"done": true}) updates the todo and returns it (400 for an empty or invalid change, 404 as above) |
DELETE |
/api/todos/:id |
Login required. Deletes the todo: {:deleted true} (404 as above) |
GET |
/nrepl |
Admin only. Whether the nREPL debug server is on: {:enabled false}, or {:enabled true :bind "127.0.0.1" :port 7888} |
POST |
/nrepl |
Admin only. Body {"enabled": true} (JSON or EDN) starts the nREPL debug server, false stops it; returns {:enabled true :bind "127.0.0.1" :port 7888} |
curl localhost:3000/api/ping # pong
curl 'localhost:3000/api/add?x=2&y=3' # {:result 5}
curl 'localhost:3000/api/add?x=2&y=3' -H 'Accept: application/json' # {"result":5}
Formats
The API speaks EDN, JSON and Transit (application/transit+json, application/transit+msgpack).
Responses follow the request's Accept header, and request bodies are read by their Content-Type.
EDN is the default: with no Accept (or */*, or a type the API can't produce) you get EDN, and a
body sent with no Content-Type is read as EDN. Errors (400, 401, 403, ...) use the same format
as everything else. Two exceptions: /api/ping is always text/plain, and /swagger.json is always JSON.
Handlers return plain data ((tbd.http/respond 200 {:result 5})), and the muuntaja middleware in
tbd.core encodes it; don't pr-str a body yourself.
Todos
Each logged-in user has their own todo list, keyed by their Gitea user id. Every query is
filtered by that id, so users can't see or change each other's todos; someone else's todo answers
404, exactly like a missing one. Without a login the todo routes answer 401. The operations
themselves (ownership, validation, storage) live in src/tbd/todo/service.clj, which the HTTP routes
and the MCP tools both call, so they behave the same and are tested once; a route or
tool only translates its request into a service call and the result into a response, and never
touches the database.
Everything the app stores (todos, and the MCP OAuth state) lives in one local
SQLite file, data/tbd.db by default (git-ignored), which is created and
migrated on first use. Each group owns its own tables (tbd.todo.db, tbd.oauth.db); tbd.sqlite opens the
file and runs their migrations. Set DB_PATH to put it elsewhere. In Docker, mount a volume at that path
(e.g. docker run -v tbd-data:/app/data ...), or the todos and MCP approvals are lost with the container.
Every id the app issues (a todo's, an OAuth grant's) is a UUID, never a number: a model that reads 7 as a
todo's id mixes it up with a 7 in a title. (owner-id is the user's id in Gitea, which it issues, so it stays
a number.) A database from before that is migrated when it is opened: rows keep their order and get UUIDs, so
the ids in URLs or notes from before no longer work.
# after logging in in a browser, copy the `tbd-session` cookie value:
curl -XPOST localhost:3000/api/todos -H 'Cookie: tbd-session=...' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"title": "buy milk"}'
curl localhost:3000/api/todos -H 'Cookie: tbd-session=...'
MCP server
The server also speaks MCP (Model Context Protocol) at /mcp,
built on PluMCP and running inside this same process; there is
nothing extra to start. It uses the Streamable HTTP transport, and, like the todo API, it acts as
the logged-in user: a client has to be approved by a user first (see below), and from then on
every tool call knows who is calling.
claude mcp add --transport http tbd https://tbd.example.com/mcp # <BASE_URL>/mcp
The first time the client connects it gets a 401, opens your browser, you log in with Gitea
as usual and approve the client, and the client keeps its tokens from then on. It needs the
Gitea login to be configured, including BASE_URL (which must
be the address the client uses; without them /mcp answers 503 rather than being open).
It offers these tools: ping, add (the same logic as /api/add), whoami (which user this
connection acts as, and whether they are an admin), and, on the caller's own todos (the same ones
as /api/todos), list_todos, get_todo, create_todo, update_todo and delete_todo. To add a
tool, add a tool to src/tbd/mcp/tools.clj; it should call the group's service (or pure core
functions), not a database, and if the group has no service yet, that is the thing to add, so the
HTTP routes can share it. Its arguments are described by the group's
Malli schema in src/tbd/<group>/schema.clj, the same schema the
HTTP routes use for their parameters, so a shape of data is written down once: the tool's
input schema is generated from it, and the arguments a client sends are coerced and validated against
it (plumcp only checks that required ones are present). A tool that touches a user's data or does
something admin-only gets the caller from current-user there ({:login :id :admin? :client-id}),
and must not trust anything else about who is asking.
(The UI has tools of its own for a browser agent, see below; they are not part of this server.)
Sessions are kept in memory, so they end when the server restarts (clients just re-initialize; their
tokens are in the database and keep working). Server-to-client streaming (GET /mcp) is deliberately
off: nothing here pushes messages, and the response would hang under Jetty. PluMCP needs JDK 21+.
Connecting an MCP client
tbd is its own OAuth 2.1 authorization server for /mcp (in src/tbd/oauth/), with the Gitea login
as the way a user proves who they are. Gitea's own tokens never reach an MCP client, and the tokens
tbd issues are worth nothing anywhere else. The flow is the one the
MCP authorization spec
describes, so any compliant client does it by itself:
POST /mcpwith no token gets401andWWW-Authenticate: Bearer resource_metadata="<BASE_URL>/.well-known/oauth-protected-resource/mcp".- The client reads that document, then
/.well-known/oauth-authorization-server, and registers itself at/oauth/register(dynamic client registration, public clients only). - It opens
/oauth/authorizein the browser (authorization-code flow, PKCES256required). If you aren't logged in you go through the Gitea login first and come back; then a consent page names the client and the address you'll be sent back to, and asks you to Approve or Deny. - The client trades the code at
/oauth/tokenfor an access token (1 hour) and a refresh token (30 days, rotated on every use), and sendsAuthorization: Bearer ...on every/mcprequest.
The consent page is what stops a stranger's client (anyone can register one) from getting a token by
sending you a link: nothing is issued without your click. Redirect URIs must be https, http on
localhost/127.0.0.1/[::1] (the port may vary), or an app's own scheme (cursor://...).
What's stored is in the app's database (DB_PATH): registered clients, and for each approval the user and a hash of the
current access and refresh tokens. To cut a client off, delete its row from grants. Admin-ness isn't in
the token: it is looked up in ADMIN_USERS on every request, so removing someone from the list takes
effect at once. A Gitea account that is disabled keeps working until its refresh token expires (up to 30
days without use) or its grant is deleted, since Gitea isn't asked again after the login.
A2A server
The server also speaks A2A (Agent2Agent) at /a2a, for other agents
(Claude Code, Codex, ...) to call directly, the way /mcp lets an MCP client call its tools. It's a
second face of the same agent as the chatbot (tbd.agent.core), but not tied to a browser page: an
A2A caller has no page open, so tbd.agent.a2a gives it the app's server-side tools instead —
todo CRUD and math, the same operations tbd.mcp.tools exposes to MCP clients, defined again over
tbd.todo.service/tbd.math.core directly (this ns doesn't depend on plumcp). Its system prompt
(tbd.agent.instructions/a2a) is framed for a caller with no page and no visual feedback, not the
chatbot's in-page persona.
curl https://tbd.example.com/.well-known/agent-card.json # <BASE_URL>/a2a, its capabilities and skills
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"message/send","params":{"message":{"role":"user","kind":"message","messageId":"m1","parts":[{"kind":"text","text":"list my todos"}]}}}' \
https://tbd.example.com/a2a
$TOKEN is the same OAuth access token an MCP client gets (above):
wrap-bearer-auth verifies a token by looking it up, not by which resource it names, so a token
minted for /mcp works here too. Only message/send is implemented — the AgentCard says so
(capabilities.streaming: false) — so a call is synchronous: if the agent asks for a tool, this ns
runs it itself immediately (server-side, no browser to hand it to) and asks the agent again, up to 8
rounds, until it answers in text, which comes back as the JSON-RPC result (an A2A Message, role
"agent"). Streaming for a browser-driven conversation is what AG-UI is for.
Authentication and the admin API
Login is OAuth2 (authorization-code flow) against a Gitea instance.
Anyone with a Gitea account can log in, but routes marked :admin? true (currently
GET and POST /nrepl) also require the user to be on the ADMIN_USERS allowlist: 401 without a
login, 403 for a logged-in non-admin. With no allowlist, nobody is an admin.
- In Gitea (Settings > Applications) create an OAuth2 application, a confidential client, with
the redirect URI
<BASE_URL>/auth/callback. cp .env-template .envand fill it in.script/serverloads.env; for Docker usedocker run --env-file .env..envis git-ignored and kept out of the image.
| Variable | Purpose |
|---|---|
GITEA_URL, GITEA_CLIENT_ID, GITEA_CLIENT_SECRET |
The Gitea OAuth2 application. Without all three (and BASE_URL), /auth/login answers 503 |
BASE_URL |
Public URL of this app; an https:// one also marks the session cookie Secure. It is also the address of the MCP and A2A servers: the OAuth issuer, what MCP clients are told to use (<BASE_URL>/mcp), and the A2A AgentCard's url (<BASE_URL>/a2a) |
ADMIN_USERS |
Comma-separated Gitea usernames (case-insensitive) allowed to use the admin API |
SESSION_SECRET |
Signs and encrypts session cookies. Unset = a random key per start, so logins don't survive a restart |
DB_PATH |
The app's SQLite file: todos, and the MCP OAuth server's registered clients, codes and tokens (default data/tbd.db). Mount a volume for it in Docker, or todos are lost and every MCP client has to be approved again after each restart |
LMSTUDIO_URL, LMSTUDIO_MODEL, LMSTUDIO_API_KEY, LMSTUDIO_TIMEOUT_SECONDS |
The LM Studio server behind the chatbot. Only the URL is needed |
CHAT_TRACE_FILE |
Optional. A file to append a JSON trace of every chatbot turn to, with the model's full reasoning and replies. Off by default |
NREPL_PORT, NREPL_BIND |
Where the debug nREPL listens (default 7888 on 127.0.0.1) |
Sessions live in an encrypted, signed, HttpOnly, SameSite=Lax cookie and expire after 8 hours
(enforced server-side). The cookie is stateless, so POST /auth/logout clears it in the browser but
can't revoke a copy someone already captured; it just expires on its own.
The nREPL endpoint
# after logging in in a browser, copy the `tbd-session` cookie value:
curl -XPOST localhost:3000/nrepl -H 'Cookie: tbd-session=...' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"enabled": true}'
clj -Sdeps '{:deps {nrepl/nrepl {:mvn/version "1.2.0"}}}' -M -m nrepl.cmdline --connect --host 127.0.0.1 --port 7888
nREPL has no authentication and evaluates arbitrary code, so enabling it is effectively remote code
execution for whoever can reach the port. It therefore binds to loopback by default; reach it through
an SSH tunnel (or docker exec) rather than setting NREPL_BIND=0.0.0.0. Each enable/disable is
logged with the admin's Gitea username. It stays on until an admin disables it (or the server
restarts), so switch it off when you're done.
UI
ui/ is a re-frame app (ClojureScript, React 19 via
Reagent) built with shadow-cljs.
It has four pages, as tabs across the top. Each has its own address in the URL's fragment (/#/tic-tac-toe,
/#/calculator, /#/todos, /#/ai-setup), so the server only ever serves /, and a page can be bookmarked or reloaded.
| Tab | What's on it |
|---|---|
| Tic-tac-toe | Two players on one board, all client side |
| Calculator | A small form that calls GET /api/add and shows the sum (or the server's validation error) |
| Todos | Your todo list (add, tick off, delete), backed by /api/todos. The tab only shows once you're logged in; its address shows a "Log in" prompt otherwise |
| AI setup | The claude mcp add ... command to copy (with this page's own address in it) and the steps to sign in, for adding the MCP server to Claude Code; and how to connect an MCP client to the page's own browser tools |
A "Log in" / "Log out" link sits in the footer row next to the API docs links.
A green square in the bottom left corner (on every page, opposite the blue WebMCP one) opens the chatbot.
shadow-cljs compiles it into resources/public/js/ (git-ignored). The server serves that
directory at /js, and serves resources/public/index.html, the shell that mounts the app, at /.
| Task | What it does |
|---|---|
script/ui-build |
Optimized release build into resources/public/js |
script/ui-watch |
Rebuilds on every change, with hot reload; run script/server alongside and refresh the page |
The Docker image builds the UI in its own stage, so docker build needs no local Node. The UI's tests run
in another stage of the same Dockerfile (--target ui-test), which the server image doesn't include.
Chatbot
The green square opens a small chat panel. What you type goes to POST /api/chat, an
AG-UI run; the backend's agent (tbd.agent.core, a
LangChain4j streaming chat model) forwards the conversation to an
LM Studio server (its OpenAI-compatible /v1/chat/completions) and streams
the reply back as AG-UI events. The browser never talks to the LLM directly, so the server's address
(and key) stay on the backend. The panel shows "Thinking…" until the model's first word (a reasoning
model can take a while), then the reply appears as it is generated. What the model reasons is never
shown, only that it is thinking; the tool calls (see below) show as small grey lines between the
replies, in full, however long, and the conversation scrolls. The conversation lives in the page only
(a reload or logging out clears it), and the UI sends the last 40 messages of it. Chat needs a login,
like the todos: every message costs the LLM server's time.
The conversation scrolls. It follows the reply while you are at its end; scroll up to read back and it stays put until you send a message or scroll down again. Drag the panel's top right corner to make it wider or taller (the size is kept while the page is open, through Clear and closing the panel).
curl -N shows the stream (-N turns off curl's own buffering; use your session cookie):
curl -N -H "Cookie: $COOKIE" -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{"messages":[{"id":"m1","role":"user","content":"hi"}]}' http://localhost:3000/api/chat
The chatbot's tools
The chatbot can use the page. The browser tools (the calculator, the todos,
tic-tac-toe) are registered in the page's model context, ui/src/tbd/ui/model_context.cljs, which is
what WebMCP's navigator.modelContext is to an agent outside the page. The chat is that agent, embedded,
and this is exactly the shape of AG-UI's frontend tools: the agent asks, the browser runs them.
- Each
POST /api/chatcarries"tools", the ones the page currently offers, as AG-UI describes them ({"name", "description", "parameters"}, the schema being JSON Schema), and"context"naming the page ({"description": "page", "value": "tic-tac-toe"}). The backend converts them to LangChain4j's typed tool specifications for the LLM, and stays stateless. Only the tools of the page being shown are listed: a tool registered with:pages #{:calculator}is offered on the Calculator page and nowhere else (tic-tac-toe's tools are the Tic-tac-toe page's, the todos' are the Todos page's), and one with no:pages(ping,whoami,navigate) on every page. The list follows the page the user is on each time the conversation is sent (so does the page's name, which the backend's agent puts in the system message ahead of the conversation, with the names of the tools it has), and a call for a tool the page doesn't offer is refused with an error the LLM reads. The LLM can move between pages withnavigate; its next request then carries the new page and that page's tools. An agent outside the page, through WebMCP, is still offered all of them. - The LLM never runs anything. When it wants a tool, it says so: the reply ends with
TOOL_CALL_START/TOOL_CALL_ARGS/TOOL_CALL_ENDevents, one triple per call (TOOL_CALL_ARGS'sdeltabeing the JSON text the model wrote). The backend only relays them. - The page intercepts them and calls the tools right there (one after the other), through the same handlers WebMCP uses, so they act on the page as a user would and you see it happen. The chat panel shows each call and its result in small print between the messages.
- The results go back as messages with the role
tool({"role": "tool", "toolCallId": "call_1", "content": "..."}, after the assistant message that asked, which carries"toolCalls"), in another request with the conversation so far, for the LLM to go on from, until it answers with words.
A call that can't be made (a tool that isn't there, arguments that aren't a JSON object, a tool that fails) is a result with the reason, for the model to read and try again from. To keep a model that never stops calling tools from acting on your page for ever, one message of yours gets it at most 12 calls; then the chat stops, and says so. Results are cut to the 8000 characters the server accepts.
The chatbot is told to be an agent, not a conversationalist: its system prompt
(tbd.agent.instructions/chat, in src/tbd/agent/instructions.clj — a JVM-only namespace, never on the
UI's classpath, so the chatbot's own instructions are never bundled into the browser) says that what it
does shows on your screen at once, so it should call a tool in the same turn rather than offer to, chain
calls (navigate, list, then act), take obvious defaults instead of asking, and answer in one short
sentence, since the call and its result are already shown. It reuses the wording that genuinely is shared
with an outside agent (act, work-it-out, tic-tac-toe-rules, examples) from tbd.agent.prompt (the
shared .cljc, see below) rather than duplicating it. If a model still
answers requests with offers, that's what to tune for it; the tool descriptions in webmcp.cljs are the
other lever.
To try it, use a model that supports tool use in LM Studio, log in, and ask the chat something the page can do: "add 2 and 3 with the calculator", "add a todo to buy milk", "play tic-tac-toe with me, you're O".
A reverse proxy in front of tbd must not buffer responses, or the reply arrives all at once at the end
(the server sends X-Accel-Buffering: no, which nginx obeys; for others, turn buffering off for /api/chat).
The REASONING_MESSAGE_CONTENT events also keep the connection from looking idle to a proxy while the model reasons; the UI drops their text, only using them to show "Thinking…".
Anything that goes wrong is logged on the server's stdout, with a [tbd] chat: prefix.
Point the backend at your instance with environment variables (see .env-template):
LMSTUDIO_URL=http://192.168.1.20:1234 script/server
Only LMSTUDIO_URL is required (the address of LM Studio's server, without /v1; for a remote instance
turn on "Serve on Local Network" there). LMSTUDIO_MODEL picks a model by id (default: the one LM Studio
has loaded), LMSTUDIO_API_KEY is sent as a bearer token if the server wants one, and
LMSTUDIO_TIMEOUT_SECONDS (default 120) is how long the LLM server may stay silent, before it starts
answering or between two pieces of it, before the server gives up. Without LMSTUDIO_URL the server
still starts (it says so), and the chat panel shows "chat is not configured".
Watching the chatbot think
Every request to /api/chat is one turn of the model, and every turn is logged on stdout: one
turn-start line when it goes out and one turn-end line when it ends. The tool loop runs in the browser,
so the server sees each tool result as a fresh request; the turns of one loop are tied together by a run
id (a hash of the user's last message), with step counting them from 0.
[tbd] chat turn-start req=9c1e4a07 run=d4a6cdb3 step=3 page=tic-tac-toe model=qwen messages=8 tools=6 prompt-chars=1180 run-calls=3
[tbd] chat loop-suspect req=9c1e4a07 run=d4a6cdb3 step=3 kind=repeated-call tool=get_tic_tac_toe count=3 args={}
[tbd] chat loop-suspect req=9c1e4a07 run=d4a6cdb3 step=3 kind=repeated-thinking count=8 text="Let me check the board again."
[tbd] chat turn-end req=9c1e4a07 run=d4a6cdb3 step=3 outcome=tool-calls duration-ms=18040 ttft-ms=2210 think-ms=15100 events=1830 thinking-chars=9210 content-chars=0 calls="get_tic_tac_toe{}" flags=repeated-thinking
turn-end says how it ended (outcome: done, tool-calls, error, upstream-error, or aborted when the
browser went away), how long it took (ttft-ms is the wait for the first piece, which includes the LLM
reading the prompt; think-ms the time spent reasoning before answering), how much it wrote (events is
close to a token count), and finish-reason and token counts when the LLM server sends them. flags is
the grep handle for a stuck model, with a loop-suspect line for each trip as it happens:
| Flag | Means |
|---|---|
repeated-call |
The same tool was called with the same arguments 3 or more times in one run (checked when the turn starts) |
repeated-thinking |
The reasoning said the same sentence again, ignoring case and punctuation: at the 4th time, then the 8th, 16th, ... |
long-reasoning |
The reasoning passed 8000 characters, then 16000, ... (only the ones without an answer yet are worrying) |
truncated |
The LLM stopped with finish_reason: length: it ran out of tokens, typically in a reasoning loop |
These are heuristics for where to look, not verdicts, and nothing is stopped: the server's timeout only counts silence, so a model that reasons forever, out loud, is never cut off by it.
The log has no text of the conversation. To read what the model actually thought, set CHAT_TRACE_FILE
(say data/chat-trace.jsonl, which git ignores): each turn's entries are appended there as JSON lines, with
the full reasoning, reply and (in turn-start) the input messages of the run, the tool results the
model was reacting to. It holds what the user typed, so treat it like the database.
# the runs that got stuck, and how
jq -c 'select((.flags // []) | length > 0) | {run, step, flags, thinking_chars: ."thinking-chars"}' data/chat-trace.jsonl
# what the model said in one turn
jq -r 'select(.req == "9c1e4a07" and .event == "turn-end") | .reasoning' data/chat-trace.jsonl
Browser MCP tools (WebMCP)
The page also offers tools of its own to your MCP client (Claude), through WebMCP:
a small library that adds a widget to the page and lets the page register tools with it. They are the browser-side twin of the
server's MCP tools: those work on your data on the server, these work the page, doing
what you could do with the mouse and keyboard, so you see it happen. A tool that changes something opens the tab it acts on first (the todo tools open Todos, the game tools open Tic-tac-toe, the calculator tools open Calculator). They are in ui/src/tbd/ui/webmcp.cljs,
registered with registerTool on a WebMCP instance (the @jason.today/webmcp npm package):
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
ping, whoami |
Health check; who is logged in on the page, if anyone |
navigate |
Opens a page (tic-tac-toe, calculator, todos or ai-setup) as a click on its tab would; todos needs a login, like its tab. The chatbot is then offered the new page's tools |
get_calculator |
What the calculator form holds: its two fields and the result it shows |
add |
Types x and y into the calculator, presses Add, and returns the sum the page shows |
list_todos |
The todos the page shows (login required, like the todo list itself) |
get_todo |
Reads todos by id (todos: a list of {id}) |
create_todo |
Types each title into the new-todo field and presses Add (todos: a list of {title}), returns the new todos |
set_todo_done |
Ticks or unticks the checkboxes of several todos in one call (todos: a list of {id, done}), so a bulk change is one tool call |
delete_todo |
Presses the Delete button of several todos (todos: a list of {id}) |
The todo tools take their work as a list, so a batch ("untick all of them") is one tool call: the chatbot is capped in the tool calls it may make in a turn. A batch is checked in full before its first change is made, and then made one todo at a time; if one fails part way, the error says how many were done.
Each tool dispatches the same re-frame events the views do and waits for the result to show up in
the app-db, so what the agent sees is what the page shows, server errors included. There is no
update_todo with a title as on the server, because the page can't edit one.
Next to the tools the page registers prompts and resources (prompts and resources in webmcp.cljs),
so a client's lists of them are not empty. They carry the same prompt engineering as the chatbot, from
shared/tbd/agent/prompt.cljc (a .cljc, on the classpath of both the server and the UI build): act instead
of offering, chain the calls, take obvious defaults, report in a sentence, and play tic-tac-toe by the turn.
The WebMCP bridge sends no server-level instructions, so this is how Claude or Codex learns them:
| Prompt | What it is |
|---|---|
drive_the_app |
The instructions, then the task you gave it (Claude Code lists it as a slash command). Without a task, the agent asks what you want |
play_tic_tac_toe |
Plays a game with you, one move on its own turn, as side (x or o, default o) |
| Resource | What it is |
|---|---|
webmcp://app/guide |
The instructions, as Markdown: read this first |
webmcp://app/state |
JSON: the page that is open, the pages (which need a login) and who is logged in |
The bridge prefixes their names with the page's channel, like the tools'. A client does not read a
resource on its own: mention it (@) or ask the agent to read the guide.
To connect (the page's "Browser tools (WebMCP)" section says the same):
- Add the WebMCP server to your MCP client, once:
npx -y @jason.today/webmcp@latest --config claude(restart Claude Desktop afterwards). - Ask the client to make a webmcp token.
- Click the blue square in the bottom right corner of the page, paste the token, and press Connect. The token works once, and the page has no field for it: the widget is where it goes.
- The tools show up in the client, prefixed with the page's host.
Development
Every task is a bash script in script/. Start an nREPL server (with CIDER middleware) on the port in .nrepl-port, or 3000 if that
file doesn't exist:
script/repl
Tests
| Task | What it does |
|---|---|
script/unit-test |
Runs the Clojure tests in test/ |
script/ui-test |
Runs the ClojureScript tests in ui/test/ under Node, in a jsdom window (needs Node and a JDK) |
script/integration-test |
Builds the app image, starts it on a random port, runs the integration suite against it, then tears it down |
script/test |
UI tests, unit tests, then integration tests (stops at the first failure) |
script/docker-unit-test |
Same as script/unit-test, but inside the app image (Docker only) |
script/docker-ui-test |
Same as script/ui-test, but inside a Node + JDK image (Docker only) |
The UI tests render the real app in jsdom against a fake server and drive it like a user (type, submit,
click), next to plain tests of the re-frame events and subscriptions, the game rules and the WebMCP tools
(ui/test/tbd/ui/; the shared fakes are in test_util.cljs). ui/test/dom-setup.cjs gives them a
window and the real WebMCP library, and fails a run that hangs, rejects a promise nobody handles, or ends
without a result (a test that never calls done would otherwise pass or stall silently). npm test in
ui/ preloads it, so use that (or the scripts) rather than running the build's output directly.
Coverage
Line coverage of the Clojure code via Cloverage, and of the UI via c8:
| Task | Output |
|---|---|
script/unit-coverage |
target/coverage/unit/ |
script/integration-coverage |
target/coverage/integration/ |
script/ui-coverage |
target/coverage/ui/ (V8 coverage of the compiled UI, mapped back to ui/src/**/*.cljs through the source maps) |
script/coverage |
Runs all three, then writes the merged Clojure report to target/coverage/merged/ (the UI's stays separate) |
script/docker-unit-coverage, script/docker-ui-coverage, script/docker-coverage-report |
Dockerized versions of the unit run, the UI run and the merge step, so script/docker-ui-coverage, script/docker-unit-coverage, script/integration-coverage, script/docker-coverage-report is script/coverage with no local Clojure, Node or Babashka (this is what CI runs) |
Each report directory has an index.html and an lcov.info. The UI's numbers are approximate where one
ClojureScript form compiles to several JavaScript blocks (a case or cond, say): a line can show as
uncovered when only part of the form ran. See
integration-test/README.md for how integration coverage is
collected.
Project layout
src/tbd/
core.clj Router, Ring app, and server startup
<group>/routes.clj Each route group (health, math, ...) owns its route subtree
<group>/core.clj Business logic for the group, with no HTTP concerns
<group>/schema.clj Malli schemas of the group's input, shared by its routes and the MCP tools
auth/ Gitea OAuth (core), session + admin middleware (middleware), /auth routes
mcp/ MCP server (PluMCP) mounted at `/mcp`: tools (tools.clj), Malli-to-tool glue (schema.clj) and the Ring handler (routes.clj)
oauth/ tbd as the OAuth authorization server for MCP and A2A clients: rules (core), SQLite storage (db), `/oauth` + discovery routes, and the bearer-token middleware guarding `/mcp` and `/a2a` (middleware)
agent/ The agent: a LangChain4j streaming chat model (core), JSON-Schema translation for tool specs (json_schema), its system prompts (instructions), and the A2A server mounted at `/a2a` (a2a)
chat/ /api/chat: the AG-UI wire protocol (routes), the request's Malli schema (schema), per-turn logging and loop detection (trace) — the agent itself is agent/core.clj
nrepl/ On-demand nREPL server (core) and the admin-only `/nrepl` routes
todo/ Per-user todos: pure rules (core), Malli schemas of the input (schema), SQLite storage (db), `/api/todos` routes
shared/ .cljc read by both the server and the UI (tbd.agent.prompt: the instructions an outside agent, through WebMCP, is given — the chatbot's own system prompt is server-only, in src/tbd/agent/instructions.clj)
ui/ ClojureScript re-frame app (shadow-cljs project); ui/src/tbd/ui/{db,events,subs,views,webmcp,model_context,core}.cljs, tests in ui/test/
.env-template Settings the server reads from the environment; copy to .env (git-ignored)
resources/public/ index.html (the shell served at /) and js/ (compiled UI output, git-ignored)
test/ Unit tests
integration-test/ Dockerized integration tests and coverage harness
script/ Bash entry points (server, ui-build, ui-test, test, coverage, repl, ...) and coverage helpers
To add a new group, create tbd.<group>.routes with a routes fn that returns a reitit route
vector, then add it to the router in src/tbd/core.clj. To make a route admin-only, put
:admin? true in its route data (admin allowlist), or :login? true (any logged-in user; the user is
passed to the handler as :user). A group with storage keeps it in its own tbd.<group>.db, apart
from its business logic in core.clj, with a migrate! fn for its tables in the app's one database;
add it to the sqlite/open call in make-router.