docs: running hugging_face_task locally silently fails for 5 MCP servers due to private mercor-mcp-shared dependency

[DanielTobi0]

Problem

When following the Quick Start in examples/hugging_face_task/README.md and running ./run.sh locally, the script fails with a 503 Service Unavailable on the POST /apps call after the environment is populated:

[07:19:28] Configuring MCP servers...
[07:19:28]   Servers: ['calendar_server', 'chat_server', 'code_execution_server', 'sheets_server', 'filesystem_server', 'mail_server', 'pdf_server', 'slides_server', 'docs_server']
...
httpx.HTTPStatusError: Server error '503 Service Unavailable' for url 'http://localhost:8080/apps'

Checking the container logs reveals that 5 servers fail their readiness check:

WARNING  | Server 'mail_server' FAILED after 7 attempt(s) (303.0s): No tools found after 303.0s (last error: Timeout)
WARNING  | Server 'calendar_server' FAILED after 7 attempt(s) (303.0s): No tools found after 303.0s (last error: Timeout)
WARNING  | Server 'sheets_server' FAILED after 7 attempt(s) (303.0s): No tools found after 303.0s (last error: Timeout)
WARNING  | Server 'docs_server' FAILED after 7 attempt(s) (303.0s): No tools found after 303.0s (last error: Timeout)
WARNING  | Server 'code_execution_server' FAILED after 7 attempt(s) (303.0s): No tools found after 303.0s (last error: Timeout)
ERROR    | MCP readiness check failed: 5 server(s) not ready (4 server(s) ready)

Root Cause

The 5 failing servers all depend on a private GitHub package mercor-mcp-shared (from https://github.com/Mercor-Intelligence/mercor-mcp-shared):

• mcp_servers/mail/pyproject.toml
• mcp_servers/calendar/pyproject.toml
• mcp_servers/documents/pyproject.toml
• mcp_servers/spreadsheets/pyproject.toml
• mcp_servers/code/mcp_servers/code_execution_server/ (via the code build step)

The Dockerfile does support passing a github_token build secret for exactly this purpose:

RUN --mount=type=secret,id=github_token,required=false   export UV_GITHUB_TOKEN= &&   if [ -n "$UV_GITHUB_TOKEN" ]; then git config ...; fi   && ( cd /app/mcp_servers/mail/mcp_servers/mail_server && uv sync --all-extras || echo "WARNING: mail install failed, skipping" )

However, because the secret is required=false and the install step has || echo "WARNING: ... install failed, skipping", the Docker build succeeds silently when no token is provided. The user gets a working image where these 5 servers are effectively hollow — they start but expose no tools, causing the 5-minute readiness timeout.

The 4 servers that work (filesystem_server, chat_server, pdf_server, slides_server) have no dependency on mercor-mcp-shared and install fine without a token.

Environment

• OS: Linux (Ubuntu)
• Docker version: (standard)
• Ran without GITHUB_TOKEN secret during docker build

[liaohch3]

I am seeing the same issue from a fresh clone of the public repo at 9d9afa46298732824feaa9f07b77607b1dc7a19b.

What I tried:

• bash examples/hugging_face_task/run.sh 0
• cd environment && docker compose build

There are two blockers for running the official example as documented:

1. examples/hugging_face_task/run.sh cannot download mercor/apex-agents without access to the gated Hugging Face dataset.
2. The environment image build cannot install MCP server dependencies without access to the private Mercor-Intelligence/mercor-mcp-shared repo. In my clean run, docker compose build fails while installing mcp_servers/documents:

Failed to download and build `mercor-mcp-shared @ git+https://github.com/Mercor-Intelligence/mercor-mcp-shared.git@bb79278f61504c4d30d604cca73e304404999984`
fatal: could not read Username for 'https://github.com': terminal prompts disabled

The Dockerfile appears to support a github_token BuildKit secret, but the checked-in environment/docker-compose.yml does not provide that secret, and the README/run script does not document the required GitHub/Hugging Face credentials. As a result, the official hugging_face_task example is not currently reproducible from a clean public clone.

[DanielTobi0]

What are the other options to try, if this approach is failing.

[caiqizh]

This mercor-mcp-shared dependency problem still exists. The new release seems not solving this problem.