This project provides the MCP ContextForge Gateway, a versatile gateway, proxy, and registry for Model Context Protocol (MCP) and REST services. It aims to unify diverse AI backends, offering features like federation, protocol translation, and an admin UI, targeting developers building complex AI applications.

How It Works

The gateway acts as a central hub, exposing a unified endpoint for various AI services. It supports protocol translation between REST, MCP, and other formats (stdio, SSE, Streamable HTTP). Key features include service federation for discovering and aggregating peer gateways, virtualization of non-MCP services into MCP-compliant tools, and a REST-to-MCP adapter for seamless integration of REST APIs.

Quick Start & Requirements

• Installation: pip install mcp-contextforge-gateway or via Docker.
• Prerequisites: Python ≥ 3.10 (3.11 recommended).
• Running: mcpgateway --host 0.0.0.0 --port 4444 with optional environment variables for authentication and UI.
• Documentation: https://modelcontextprotocol.io/docs/

Highlighted Details

• Supports federation across multiple MCP and REST services with Redis-backed syncing.
• Virtualizes REST/gRPC services as MCP-compliant tools and servers.
• Includes an Admin UI built with HTMX and Alpine.js for management.
• Offers built-in authentication, observability, retries, and rate-limiting.

Maintenance & Community

The project is actively maintained by IBM. Community interaction and contribution guidelines are available in the repository.

Licensing & Compatibility

Licensed under the Apache License 2.0, allowing for commercial use and integration into closed-source applications.

Limitations & Caveats

The current release (0.5.0) is considered alpha/early beta and is not production-ready. Features, APIs, and behaviors are subject to change without notice. Production deployments require thorough security review and additional mechanisms.