Gateway

Gateway MCP Server acts as a single gateway to route MCP requests to multiple backend MCP servers. It simplifies management, provides automatic process handling for backends, and lets you connect to various services through one entry point, all while running in Docker for isolation.

How to use

You install Gateway MCP Server and run it as a gateway that accepts MCP requests from clients. The gateway forwards requests to the appropriate backend MCP server and returns responses to the client. You can route specific tools to particular backends and discover what tools are available across your backends. This setup lets you access multiple data sources and APIs through a single MCP gateway.

How to install

Prerequisites you need before you start: Docker and MCP Client tooling. You also need Python installed if you plan to run development or testing steps locally.

Step 1: Clone the project and enter the directory.

Step 2: Build the Docker image for the gateway.

Step 3: Configure your MCP clients to use the gateway as the entry point for routing to backend MCP servers.

# Build the Docker image for the gateway
docker build -t mcpware . --no-cache

# Run the gateway container with Docker socket access (example)
docker run -it --rm \
  -v $(pwd)/config.json:/app/config.json:ro \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
  -e GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN=YOUR_TOKEN \
  mcpware

Configuration and examples

Configure the gateway to manage backend MCP servers. You can define backends, how they are started, and how the gateway routes requests. The following two examples show how to configure the gateway for stdio-based MCP servers run via Docker.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcpware": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "-i",
        "--rm",
        "-v",
        "/path/to/mcpware/config.json:/app/config.json:ro",
        "-v",
        "/var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock",
        "--env-file",
        "/path/to/mcpware/.env",
        "mcpware"
      ]
    }
  }
}

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "redis_mcp": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": ["run", "--rm", "-i", "-e", "REDIS_HOST=localhost", "mcp/redis"]
    }
  }
}

Security and operational notes

Keep credentials in a secure environment. The gateway can be configured to read tokens from an environment file. Use the provided env file mechanism to avoid hard-coding secrets in configuration files. Regularly rotate tokens and restrict access to the gateway container and its mounted volumes.

Troubleshooting tips

If backend containers fail to start, verify that the Docker socket is accessible by the gateway container and that the backends’ start commands are valid inside the container environment. Check that environment variables referenced by backends are provided via the env-file or the container’s environment.

Available tools

create_issue

Create a new issue on a GitHub repository through the backend MCP server.

discover_backend_tools

Discover available tools provided by backend MCP servers.