Blowback (Frontend Development) MCP server

Blowback is a server that adds Model Context Protocol (MCP) capabilities to your front-end development environment, enabling integration with Cursor. It captures browser console logs, manages checkpoints, and provides tools for browser automation, making it easier to debug and develop web applications.

Installation

Add Blowback to your Cursor MCP configuration:

{
  "blowback": {
    "command": "npx",
    "args": ["-y", "blowback-context"]
  }
}

Available Tools

Browser Management

Blowback provides several tools to interact with the browser:

• start-browser: Launches a browser instance and navigates to your development server
• capture-screenshot: Takes screenshots of the current page or specific elements
• get-element-properties: Retrieves properties and state information of specific elements
• get-element-styles: Fetches style information for elements
• get-element-dimensions: Gets size and position information of elements
• get-element-html: Retrieves HTML content of elements and their children
• monitor-network: Monitors browser network requests for a specified duration
• execute-browser-commands: Safely runs predefined browser commands

Hot Module Replacement (HMR) Tools

• get-hmr-events: Retrieves recent HMR events
• check-hmr-status: Checks the current HMR status

Console Logs and Debugging

• get-console-logs: Retrieves console logs from the browser with optional filtering

Help

• how-to-use: Provides instructions for using any of the available tools

Log Management

Blowback stores all browser console logs in dedicated log files. You can query these logs using the get-console-logs tool, which supports filtering by checkpoints.

Checkpoint System

Checkpoints allow you to manage snapshots, logs, and screenshots of specific application states. To create a checkpoint:

1. Insert a meta tag into your HTML head: <meta name="__mcp_checkpoint" data-id="YOUR_CHECKPOINT_ID">
2. The system will record data using the specified ID as an identifier
3. You can then retrieve logs, screenshots, or other data specifically for that checkpoint

Architecture

Blowback consists of:

1. An MCP Server based on the Model Context Protocol SDK
2. Browser automation via Puppeteer
3. A checkpoint system for managing application state snapshots

The server maintains records of HMR events, console messages, and checkpoint data, providing these to the MCP client for improved development workflow.

How to install this MCP server

For Claude Code

To add this MCP server to Claude Code, run this command in your terminal:

claude mcp add-json "blowback" '{"command":"npx","args":["-y","blowback-context"]}'

See the official Claude Code MCP documentation for more details.

For Cursor

There are two ways to add an MCP server to Cursor. The most common way is to add the server globally in the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file so that it is available in all of your projects.

If you only need the server in a single project, you can add it to the project instead by creating or adding it to the .cursor/mcp.json file.

Adding an MCP server to Cursor globally

To add a global MCP server go to Cursor Settings > Tools & Integrations and click "New MCP Server".

When you click that button the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file will be opened and you can add your server like this:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "blowback": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "-y",
                "blowback-context"
            ]
        }
    }
}

Adding an MCP server to a project

To add an MCP server to a project you can create a new .cursor/mcp.json file or add it to the existing one. This will look exactly the same as the global MCP server example above.

How to use the MCP server

Once the server is installed, you might need to head back to Settings > MCP and click the refresh button.

The Cursor agent will then be able to see the available tools the added MCP server has available and will call them when it needs to.

You can also explicitly ask the agent to use the tool by mentioning the tool name and describing what the function does.

For Claude Desktop

To add this MCP server to Claude Desktop:

1. Find your configuration file:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
• Linux: ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

2. Add this to your configuration file:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "blowback": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "-y",
                "blowback-context"
            ]
        }
    }
}

3. Restart Claude Desktop for the changes to take effect