Evolving DVMCP

We have been working on a significant update to the DVMCP specification to incorporate the latest Model Context Protocol (MCP) version 2025-03-26, and it's capabilities. This draft revision represents our vision for how MCP services can be discovered, accessed, and utilized across the Nostr network while maintaining compatibility between both protocols.

Expanding Beyond Tools

The first version of the DVMCP specification focused primarily on tools, functions that could be executed remotely via MCP servers. While this provided valuable functionality, the Model Context Protocol offers more capabilities than just tools. In our proposed update, DVMCP would embrace the complete MCP capabilities framework. Rather than focusing solely on tools, the specification will incorporate resources (files and data sources that can be accessed by clients) and prompts (pre-defined templates for consistent interactions). This expansion transforms DVMCP into a complete framework for service interoperability between protocols.

Moving Toward a More Modular Architecture

One of the most significant architectural changes in this draft is our move toward a more modular event structure. Previously, we embedded tools directly within server announcements using NIP-89, creating a monolithic approach that was challenging to extend.

The updated specification introduces dedicated event kinds for server announcements (31316) and separate event kinds for each capability category. Tools, resources, and prompts would each have their own event kinds (31317, 31318, and 31319 respectively). This separation improves both readability and interoperability between protocols, allowing us to support pagination for example, as described in the MCP protocol. It also enables better filtering options for clients discovering specific capabilities, allows for more efficient updates when only certain capabilities change, and enhances robustness as new capability types can be added with minimal disruption.

Technical Direction

The draft specification outlines several technical improvements worth highlighting. We've worked to ensure consistent message structures across all capability types and created a clear separation of concerns between Nostr metadata (in tags) and MCP payloads (in content). The specification includes support for both public server discovery and direct private server connections, comprehensive error handling aligned with both protocols, and detailed protocol flows for all major operations.

Enhancing Notifications

Another important improvement in our design is the redesign of the job feedback and notification system. We propose to make event kind 21316 (ephemeral). This approach provides a more efficient way to deliver status updates, progress information, and interactive elements during capability execution without burdening relays with unnecessary storage requirements.

This change would enable more dynamic interactions between clients and servers, particularly for long-running operations.

Seeking Community Feedback

We're now at a stage where community input would be highly appreciated. If you're interested in DVMCP, we'd greatly appreciate your thoughts on our approach. The complete draft specification is available for review, and we welcome your feedback through comments on our pull request at dvmcp/pull/18. Your insights and suggestions will help us refine the specification to better serve the needs of the community.

Looking Ahead

After gathering and incorporating community feedback, our next step will be updating the various DVMCP packages to implement these changes. This will include reference implementations for both servers (DVMCP-bridge) and clients (DVMCP-discovery).

We believe this proposed update represents a significant step forward for DVMCP. By embracing the full capabilities framework of MCP, we're expanding what's possible within the protocol while maintaining our commitment to open standards and interoperability.

Stay tuned for more updates as we progress through the feedback process and move toward implementation. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the evolution of DVMCP, and we look forward to your continued involvement.