My MCP integration got rejected. Almost nothing in the server had to change.

In July I set out to add our MCP server to the ChatGPT app directory. The server was already live, running in Claude and Cursor, with OAuth working. Submitting looked like a formality: describe what already exists, fill in the application, hit Submit.

A month and one rejection later, almost nothing had changed in the server itself. It had been working the whole time. What we ended up fixing was everything around it: how ChatGPT discovers the tools, what the scanner expects, what we'd written in the descriptions, and whether a reviewer could actually log in.

Here's what caught me.

The tool list that freezes solid

The first problem came before submission. I connected the server to ChatGPT — the connector was created, but it showed "no actions available." Zero tools. In Claude and Cursor the same tools loaded fine.