Alan Tse 9a7233ced5 Add MCP server for AI-assisted trace analysis (#1347)
* Add MCP server for AI-assisted trace analysis.

Introduce an optional Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that lets AI
assistants analyze Tracy captures and live sessions through Tracy's own
server engine. The server runs as a Python sidecar and talks to the
existing C++ analysis code through new pybind11 bindings.

- python/bindings/ServerModule.cpp: TracyServerBindings module exposing
  Worker, file I/O, zones, GPU zones, frame data, plots, messages, locks,
  source locations, and summary statistics (zone/GPU child stats, frame
  timing, etc.).
- python/CMakeLists.txt: builds and installs TracyServerBindings alongside
  TracyClientBindings.
- extra/mcp/tracy_mcp.py: FastMCP SSE singleton with dynamic port
  discovery, PID-file based singleton detection, session-isolated worker
  instances, synchronous and background eval, task polling, and a
  shutdown tool to release the .pyd lock during development.
- extra/mcp/start_mcp.sh, .gitignore: launcher with local override hook;
  ignores generated port/pid files.
- manual/tracy.md: documents building, running, and integrating the
  server with an AI assistant.

* Improve Tracy MCP cold-start guidance.

Cold-start usability testing showed an LLM agent burned ~7 exploratory
calls discovering the ctx object model, time-unit conventions, and join
keys before producing useful analysis. Surface that information up front
through MCP resources and entry-point tool guidance.

- extra/mcp/eval_guide.md: new bindings-layer reference covering the
  Worker object graph (zone / GPU zone / frame / thread / message /
  plot / lock / memory entry points), nanosecond time units, ZoneStats
  field semantics including self-time via get_child_zone_stats, the
  opaque 'name (addr)[arch] <srcloc_id>' key format, and worked
  examples translating common queries into ctx Python.
- extra/mcp/tracy_mcp.py: expose system.prompt.md and eval_guide.md as
  MCP resources (tracy://prompt and tracy://eval-guide) so external
  agents and Tracy Assist share the same guidance source. Resource
  content is re-read per request — edits propagate without a server
  restart.
- Point load_capture and live_connect return values plus the eval tool
  description at the resources, so the agent reads them before its
  first eval rather than introspecting blind.
- Expand load_capture docstring: name the path parameter explicitly,
  show Windows path syntax, and direct agents to list_captures plus
  TRACY_CAPTURES_DIR for capture discovery.
- Probe is_connected() briefly after Worker construction in
  live_connect and surface an actionable error on silent handshake
  failures (typically a Tracy client/server version mismatch or
  TRACY_ON_DEMAND) instead of returning misleading success.

Reduces a fresh agent's cold-start overhead from 7 exploratory calls
to 4, where the remaining 4 are unavoidable harness/schema-fetch
overhead, not API-design friction.

* Detect Tracy protocol mismatches via UDP broadcast pre-flight.

Tracy clients announce themselves on UDP port 8086 every ~3 seconds with
a BroadcastMessage carrying the protocol version, listen port, and
program name (public/common/TracyProtocol.hpp). The Tracy GUI reads this
and refuses to attempt a TCP connection on protocol mismatch, surfacing
a precise error. live_connect previously had no equivalent check, so a
mismatch produced an opaque 2-second handshake timeout with no
diagnostic about what was wrong.

- Add a broadcast parser handling versions 0-3, with variable-length
  programName (Tracy sends only the actual name + null terminator on
  the wire, not the full 64-byte buffer).
- Add a non-blocking UDP listener that binds 8086 with SO_REUSEADDR
  and waits up to 3.5s — enough to guarantee catching at least one
  beat at the 3s broadcast cadence.
- Read our bindings' ProtocolVersion at startup by parsing
  TracyProtocol.hpp, so the comparison stays in sync with the build
  without new C++ wiring.
- live_connect runs the broadcast pre-flight before constructing
  Worker. On a matched listen_port with a differing protocol_version,
  it returns a single-line error naming the program, both versions,
  and the remediation, without ever opening a TCP connection. If no
  matching broadcast arrives, it falls through to the existing
  handshake probe, which now reports any other broadcasts seen as a
  hint (helpful when the target uses a non-default port).

* Add MCP Server section to LaTeX manual.

The markdown manual is auto-generated from the LaTeX source; add the
corresponding \subsection{MCP Server} so the two stay in sync.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* Remove hand-written MCP section from tracy.md.

tracy.md is generated from tracy.tex via latex2md.sh. The MCP section
was previously written by hand directly in the markdown; now that the
LaTeX source has been updated, the markdown section should be
regenerated by running latex2md.sh rather than maintained manually.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-05-01 16:17:55 +02:00
2024-05-25 00:16:29 +02:00
2024-05-12 19:23:18 +02:00
2023-10-09 22:38:04 +02:00
2022-04-16 00:13:10 +02:00
2025-07-27 21:18:57 +02:00
2024-09-27 16:56:55 +02:00
2026-01-01 02:12:05 +01:00
2026-04-30 18:13:11 +02:00

Tracy Profiler

Sponsor

A real time, nanosecond resolution, remote telemetry, hybrid frame and sampling profiler for games and other applications.

Tracy supports profiling CPU (Direct support is provided for C, C++, Lua, Python and Fortran integration. At the same time, third-party bindings to many other languages exist on the internet, such as Rust, Zig, C#, OCaml, Odin, etc.), GPU (All major graphic APIs: OpenGL, Vulkan, Direct3D 11/12, Metal, OpenCL, CUDA.), memory allocations, locks, context switches, automatically attribute screenshots to captured frames, and much more.

An Introduction to Tracy Profiler in C++ - Marcos Slomp - CppCon 2023

Introduction to Tracy Profiler v0.2
New features in Tracy Profiler v0.3
New features in Tracy Profiler v0.4
New features in Tracy Profiler v0.5
New features in Tracy Profiler v0.6
New features in Tracy Profiler v0.7
New features in Tracy Profiler v0.8

Description
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Readme BSD-3-Clause 55 MiB
Languages
C++ 90.1%
C 5.4%
TeX 2.3%
Python 1.1%
CMake 0.6%
Other 0.3%