ChatGPT's Custom MCP Connector and Claude (client_secret_post) OAuth both fail end-to-end against gbrain serve --http --enable-dcr today. Twelve targeted patches in serve-http.ts + oauth-provider.ts close the gaps.

Hit while wiring a self-hosted gbrain MCP server (v0.30.0) into ChatGPT's Custom Connector and verifying Claude.ai web + Claude Code stayed working. Each patch was triaged from real edge traces + Postgres oauth_clients/oauth_codes/oauth_tokens introspection rather than guessing from client-side error messages — those messages are systematically misleading (one root cause cycled through "doesn't support DCR" → "DCR endpoint 404" → "doesn't implement OAuth" → "invalid_mcp_response 405").

Verified end-to-end: ChatGPT lists search + fetch and successfully calls search against the brain; Claude.ai web + Claude Code DCR + token exchange + tools/list all green.

Happy to split this into three PRs if you'd prefer (oauth security / chatgpt compat / search-fetch shim) — flagged the natural split below.

What's actually landing

1. OAuth correctness (every confidential or PKCE-only DCR client)

/token pre-hash middleware. SDK clientAuth.js:45 strict-compares client.client_secret returned by clientsStore.getClient() to the request body's client_secret. gbrain's oauth_clients.client_secret_hash column stores sha256 hex; the client holds the plaintext returned at DCR time. The literal string compare always fails for client_secret_post clients (Claude.ai web, Claude Code) → every authorization_code / refresh_token exchange gets 400 invalid_client: \"Invalid client_secret\". SHA-256 the request's plaintext before SDK clientAuth runs so the comparison is hash-vs-hash. Skip for client_credentials grant — gbrain's own handler hashes itself and would double-hash.

getClient() strips client_secret for none clients. Same SDK clientAuth path: it demands a secret whenever client.client_secret is truthy, regardless of token_endpoint_auth_method. PKCE-only public clients (ChatGPT, mcporter, Hermes Agent, codex-cli) registered with none therefore get rejected with \"Client secret is required\". Hide the stored hash so SDK falls through to the PKCE-only path. (Durable fix: registerClient should not generate or store a secret for none clients in the first place — left for a follow-up.)

2. ChatGPT MCP connector compatibility

Catch-all .well-known rewrite middleware. ChatGPT exhaustively probes nine metadata URL variants before considering discovery complete:

oauth-authorization-server  × { root, /.well-known/<doc>/mcp, /mcp/.well-known/<doc> }
openid-configuration        × { same three forms }
oauth-protected-resource    × { same three forms }

Any 404 makes ChatGPT abort and surface a misleading "DCR endpoint 404". Single regex rewrites every variant onto the SDK's canonical paths so the same metadata body answers every probe — beats enumerated alias whack-a-mole.

resourceServerUrl: '/mcp' so PRM resource matches the URL users enter. Both confirmed-working open-source ChatGPT MCP connector references (tae0y/real-estate-mcp + Auth0, GetLarge fastify-mcp + Ory Hydra) publish PRM resource as the /mcp URL. With this set, SDK serves PRM body resource: \"https://<host>/mcp\".

UA-conditional OIDC stub fields. OpenAI's Apps SDK auth doc says ChatGPT accepts OAuth 2.0 metadata or OIDC metadata. Empirically, ChatGPT silently aborts DCR if the AS metadata document lacks subject_types_supported, id_token_signing_alg_values_supported, userinfo_endpoint, jwks_uri — both confirmed-working references are full OIDC providers, not coincidence. Inject these fields via res.json patch, gated on User-Agent matching /aiohttp|openai-mcp/i so non-ChatGPT clients keep clean OAuth 2.1 metadata. SDK's metadata document is a shared singleton, so we clone-before-mutate (otherwise one ChatGPT request would leak OIDC fields into every subsequent client's response).

/userinfo and /.well-known/jwks.json stub routes back the OIDC pointers without changing token semantics. Userinfo returns soft 200 with { sub: \"anonymous\" } (401 reads as auth failure to ChatGPT and aborts token exchange); jwks returns { keys: [] } since gbrain uses opaque tokens, not JWTs.

WWW-Authenticate on /mcp 401 carries resource_metadata= per RFC 9728 / MCP 2025-06-18 authorization spec.

Slash-collapse middleware strips leading // from req.url. gbrain publishes issuer with a trailing slash (URL canonical form), so naive issuer + \"/register\" concat in clients produces //register → Express 404.

GET /mcp returns 200 + idle SSE stream (15s heartbeat) instead of 405. MCP 2025-06-18 §StreamableHTTP permits 405 when no SSE is offered, but ChatGPT's openai-mcp/1.0.0 treats it as invalid_mcp_response fatal error. Bearer-gated so unauth probes still get the spec'd 401 challenge.

DELETE /mcp returns 405 + Allow header instead of Express's default 404.

3. Opt-in ChatGPT search/fetch shim

ChatGPT Connector mode only displays tools named exactly search and fetch with specific input schemas; everything else is silently filtered client-side. With gbrain's 30+ ops surfaced raw, ChatGPT shows zero tools.

agentName.startsWith('ChatGPT') triggers a two-tool mode:

• tools/list returns only search + fetch with inputSchema matching OpenAI's connector spec.
• tools/call rewrites fetch → get_page and projects results via toChatgptShape():
  • search → { results: [{ id, title, text, url }] }
  • fetch → { id, title, text, url, metadata }
• Returns both structuredContent (machine-read) and content[].text (legacy JSON string) for max compat.

Other MCP clients see the full op surface unchanged.

Diagnostics

appendFileSync edge-trace logger writes every inbound request to ~/.gbrain/logs/edge-trace.log synchronously, bypassing bun's block-buffered stdout under launchd StandardOutPath. Without this, gbrain serve --http's log file lags real activity by minutes-to-hours and live debug is blind. Cheap (one fs call per request, no formatting). Happy to gate behind --debug-edge-trace if you'd prefer it not be always-on.

Codex review follow-ups (not in this PR)

External review of the diff flagged 5 items I'd address in follow-up PRs once the foundation lands:

1. DCR registerClient should not generate or store a client_secret_hash for token_endpoint_auth_method='none' clients (durable fix for the PKCE secret-leak workaround).
2. /mcp should enforce the RFC 8707 resource indicator as token audience (currently stored, not validated).
3. Search result IDs should encode source_id:slug for cross-source dedup safety.
4. ChatGPT shim trigger should not rely on client_name.startsWith('ChatGPT') (DCR client_name is client-controlled). Better gated by --enable-chatgpt-compat flag or explicit /mcp/chatgpt route.
5. Tool definitions should include outputSchema.

Verification

End-to-end against a self-hosted production deploy:

• DCR + OAuth flow. Fresh ChatGPT custom connector add → POST /register (201) → GET /authorize (302) → POST /token (200) → oauth_tokens row issued with both access + refresh.
• MCP transport. GET /mcp opens SSE stream with bearer; POST /mcp JSON-RPC dispatches.
• Tool surface. ChatGPT UI displays search + fetch; search(\"<query>\") returns { results: [...] } populated from gbrain.
• Claude.ai web + Claude Code. Both regained DCR + token exchange after the /token pre-hash + getClient strip patches (had been silently 401'ing on every confidential-client client_secret_post exchange).

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