Implementation:HKUDS AI Trader MCPServiceManager Start All Services

Knowledge Sources	AI-Trader Model Context Protocol
Domains	Infrastructure, Microservices, LLM_Tooling
Last Updated	2026-02-09 14:00 GMT

Overview

Concrete tool for starting and managing all MCP tool server subprocesses provided by the AI-Trader service orchestrator.

Description

The MCPServiceManager class manages 5 MCP tool servers as subprocesses. The start_all_services() method checks for port conflicts, starts each service via subprocess.Popen, verifies health, and maintains the services with a keep-alive monitoring loop. Services include: math tools (port 8000), news search (8001), stock trade execution (8002), local price lookup (8003), and crypto trade execution (8005).

Usage

Instantiate MCPServiceManager and call start_all_services() before launching any trading agent. The services must remain running throughout the entire backtesting session. Typically invoked by the main.sh shell script or directly from the command line.

Code Reference

Source Location

Repository: AI-Trader
File: agent_tools/start_mcp_services.py
Lines: L160-201

Signature

class MCPServiceManager:
    def __init__(self):
        """Initialize service manager with port configs from environment."""

    def start_all_services(self):
        """
        Start all configured MCP tool servers.

        Checks port conflicts, starts each service subprocess,
        verifies health, and prints service info.

        Returns:
            None
        """

Import

from agent_tools.start_mcp_services import MCPServiceManager

I/O Contract

Inputs

Name	Type	Required	Description
MATH_HTTP_PORT	str (env)	No	Math tool server port (default 8000)
SEARCH_HTTP_PORT	str (env)	No	News search server port (default 8001)
TRADE_HTTP_PORT	str (env)	No	Trade execution server port (default 8002)
GETPRICE_HTTP_PORT	str (env)	No	Price lookup server port (default 8003)
CRYPTO_HTTP_PORT	str (env)	No	Crypto trade server port (default 8005)

Outputs

Name	Type	Description
5 running subprocesses	Process	MCP HTTP servers on configured ports
logs/	Directory	Service log files in ../logs/ directory

Usage Examples

Start All Services

from agent_tools.start_mcp_services import MCPServiceManager

manager = MCPServiceManager()
manager.start_all_services()
# Starts 5 MCP servers: math(8000), search(8001), trade(8002), price(8003), crypto(8005)

# Keep alive (blocking)
manager.keep_alive()

From Command Line

# Typically run via the main script:
python agent_tools/start_mcp_services.py &

# Or from the shell orchestrator:
# scripts/main.sh calls this as Step 2

Related Pages

Requires Environment

Implements Principle

Principle:HKUDS_AI_Trader_MCP_Service_Orchestration

Page Connections

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Principle

Implementation

Heuristic

Environment