seven-dpt-mcp

A tiny, local MCP server that gives Claude (in any project) a persistent set of long-running problems and a loop for cracking them — Feynman's twelve favorite problems method, driven by the tripartite model of inspiration.

• Feynman's method (via Gian-Carlo Rota): keep ~a dozen problems dormant in mind; every time you meet a new trick, test it against all of them.
• Inspiration = evocation + transcendence + approach motivation (Thrash & Elliot): a stimulus evokes a possibility, you transcend the problem's current framing, then you're motivated to act on it.

The server holds state and scaffolding; the connected model does the thinking — no LLM runs inside the server, no API key.

Tools

Tool	Purpose
add_problem	Add a long-running problem to your set
list_problems	See your open problems
get_problem	One problem + every spark (idea, next step, outcome) — the memory
evoke	The loop. Feed it a trick; returns your problems + a scaffold walking evocation → transcendence → approach
capture_spark	Persist a candidate idea + concrete next step against a problem (+ an optional cost estimate)
update_spark	Record a spark's outcome — status (tried/worked/failed), cost (effort spent), value (graded payoff, 0 for a miss). Log failures too; the zero-value outcomes are the signal a background-effort policy is learned from

Storage: ~/.local/share/seven-dpt/store.json (override with SEVEN_DPT_DB). One store, shared by every project = one brain.

How it bootstraps

On first run (no store file yet), the store seeds itself with seven-dpt's own five open product problems — auto-detection of recurring issues, the background-spend policy, proactive surfacing, keeping the set near twelve, and storage scaling. Design decision, made deliberately: the seeds are tool-generic (identical for every install, about the tool rather than about you), so the server dogfoods its own method from minute one and the ambient digest has something to show before you add your own problems. They are ordinary rows in your store — edit, replace, or clear them freely; an existing store is never touched. So the moment it runs it is already "taking care of its own problems": while you work on anything else, those sit in context and can be sparked by unrelated discoveries. The policy for how/when/how-much to chase background problems is deliberately not coded — it's meant to be learned later from the accumulated spark → outcome history, which is why update_spark exists.

That history is the reward channel: each spark carries a cost (effort to a verdict) and, once resolved, a value (graded payoff, 0 for a miss). analysis/reservation_value.py turns it into a Pandora's-Box / Gittins reservation-value ranking — but it gates on data sufficiency and refuses to emit numbers until enough resolved sparks (with cost + value, including failures) accrue, so the policy is never fit on false precision.

Install (turn on for all projects)

Via npm (recommended)

Published on npm — no build step. Register it for every project (user scope):

claude mcp add --scope user seven-dpt -- npx -y seven-dpt-mcp

From source (alternative)

npm install && npm run build
# Register for every project (user scope). Use an ABSOLUTE node path — hooks and MCP
# servers don't source your shell profile, so nvm-style setups need one:
claude mcp add --scope user seven-dpt -- "$(command -v node)" "$(pwd)/dist/index.js"

Then make the problems ambient — merge into ~/.claude/settings.json so every session opens with your dormant problems in context:

{
  "hooks": {
    "SessionStart": [
      { "matcher": "startup", "hooks": [{ "type": "command", "command": "npx -y seven-dpt-mcp --digest", "timeout": 10 }] },
      { "matcher": "resume",  "hooks": [{ "type": "command", "command": "npx -y seven-dpt-mcp --digest", "timeout": 10 }] },
      { "matcher": "clear",   "hooks": [{ "type": "command", "command": "npx -y seven-dpt-mcp --digest", "timeout": 10 }] }
    ]
  }
}

(Installed from source instead? Replace each command with an absolute node path + /absolute/path/to/seven-dpt-mcp/dist/index.js --digest — hooks don't source your shell profile, so nvm-style setups need the absolute path.)

(--digest prints nothing when no problems are open; a fresh install prints the five seeded ones — that's the bootstrap working, not noise.)

Validate the idea

1. Add a few of your own long-running problems — add_problem.
2. When you hit an interesting technique in any repo, evoke it; watch Claude test it against every problem and reframe the ones that light up.
3. Let it capture_spark the hits, then update_spark once you've tried them.
4. Days later, get_problem — if that accumulated trail feels useful, the idea's proven.

Known MVP limits (intentional)

• JSON file, last-write-wins (fine for one user).
• No retire/solve/update_problem yet — the 12-cap only warns. (Tracked as one of seven-dpt's own seeded problems.)
• evoke matching is done by the connected model, not pre-ranked by embeddings.

License

Apache-2.0 — see LICENSE.