Principle:HKUDS AI Trader MCP Service Orchestration
| Knowledge Sources | |
|---|---|
| Domains | Infrastructure, Microservices, LLM_Tooling |
| Last Updated | 2026-02-09 14:00 GMT |
Overview
An infrastructure orchestration pattern for managing the lifecycle of multiple MCP (Model Context Protocol) tool servers that provide capabilities to LLM agents.
Description
MCP Service Orchestration manages the startup, health monitoring, and shutdown of multiple MCP tool servers that the trading agent depends on. Each MCP server exposes a specific capability (e.g., math operations, news search, trade execution, price lookup) as a set of tools that the LLM agent can invoke during its reasoning loop.
The orchestrator handles port conflict detection, subprocess management, health checking, and graceful shutdown with signal handling. This pattern is essential because the agent cannot function without its tool servers being available and healthy.
Usage
Use this principle when the trading agent requires multiple external tool servers to be running before it can start its reasoning loop. The orchestrator must be started before the agent initialization step and kept alive throughout the entire backtesting session.
Theoretical Basis
# Pseudocode for MCP service orchestration
services = {
"math": {port: 8000, script: "tool_math.py"},
"search": {port: 8001, script: "tool_alphavantage_news.py"},
"trade": {port: 8002, script: "tool_trade.py"},
"price": {port: 8003, script: "tool_get_price_local.py"},
"crypto": {port: 8005, script: "tool_crypto_trade.py"},
}
for service in services:
check_port_available(service.port)
spawn_subprocess(service.script, service.port)
health_check(service.port)
# Keep alive with monitoring
while running:
for service in services:
if not health_check(service):
restart(service)
sleep(interval)
Key properties:
- Port-based isolation: Each service runs on its own HTTP port
- Health monitoring: Periodic checks ensure services remain available
- Graceful shutdown: Signal handlers clean up all subprocesses
- Pre-flight checks: Port conflicts are detected before startup