MCP Logging: What I Wish I Knew Before Deploying My Production MCP Server (3 Weeks of Production Pain)

Short summary

MCP servers require different logging than REST APIs. Author debugged 3 weeks of production issues—requests dying silently before reaching the app, proxy truncation, client timeouts. Solution: log at filter level before processing, cache request/response content, monitor response size and latency, use request IDs. Includes working Spring Boot filter code.

• •Log requests at filter level before processing to catch failures early, even if the request never reaches the application
• •Monitor response size and request duration to detect proxy truncation and timeout patterns before users report issues
• •Implement request ID tracking and secure API key masking for debugging production failures

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