MCP connection failures swallow the actual error message — only logs 'server unavailable'

[kn0wsnothing]

Problem

When an MCP server fails to connect, the log only shows:

WARN message="server unavailable" key=exodus-mcp type=remote status=failed

The connectRemote function in src/mcp/index.ts stores the actual error in lastStatus.error:

lastStatus = { status: "failed" as const, error: lastError.message }

But the logWarning call only logs status.status (always the string "failed"), never status.error (the actual error message, e.g. "401 Unauthorized" or "Streamable HTTP error: ..."):

yield* Effect.logWarning("server unavailable", { key, type: mcp.type, status: status.status })

Impact

This makes debugging MCP connection failures extremely difficult. A token-expired 401, a network timeout, a TLS error, and a server misconfiguration all produce the identical log line status=failed with no distinguishing detail. We spent significant time theorising about SDK transport bugs when the actual cause was an expired bearer token returning 401 — something the error message would have revealed immediately.

Suggested fix

Include status.error in the logWarning call:

yield* Effect.logWarning("server unavailable", { key, type: mcp.type, status: status.status, error: status.error ?? "unknown" })

This is a one-line change that would have saved a lot of debugging time. The error field is already populated — it just needs to be logged.

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Metadata

Field	Value
CLI Version	0.9.5
Platform	darwin
Architecture	arm64
OS Release	25.5.0
Category	improvement
Working Directory	editorial-intelligence
Session ID	ses_fe273aefdffeKVRGOtYcW574qX