ContextForge MCP
An IBM gateway and registry that federates MCP servers, A2A agents and REST or gRPC APIs behind one endpoint with auth and observability
- 4,720 ★ on the repository
- Last commit
- Apache-2.0
Broad access
Why this level
- Stores credentials and tokens for connected services
- Proxies tool calls that write to external systems
Install
- Works in
Manual install
pip install mcp-contextforge-gateway
python3 -m mcpgateway.scripts.init_secrets --patch-env .env
mcpgateway --host 0.0.0.0 --port 4444Install from PyPI, generate secrets and start the gateway.
Access and checks
How we reviewBroad accessThe tool can change data, run commands or handle secrets.
- Stores credentials and tokens for connected services
- Proxies tool calls that write to external systems
This is third-party code. Review the repository files before installing.
What it does
ContextForge sits in front of a set of MCP servers and APIs and gives clients a single MCP endpoint. It wraps REST and gRPC services as MCP tools, bridges stdio servers to SSE or streamable HTTP, composes virtual servers from selected tools and routes A2A agents. It has an admin UI, JWT and OAuth auth, rate limiting, retries, OpenTelemetry tracing and 40+ plugins. It deploys via PyPI, Docker or Kubernetes with Redis-backed federation.
Who it is for. For platform teams that manage MCP servers and agent access to them centrally.
Good fit when
- Your company runs many MCP servers and needs one authenticated entry point
- You need to turn internal REST or gRPC APIs into MCP tools
- You need logs and tracing of agent tool calls
Not a fit when
- You only need one or two servers for personal use
- You have no capacity to operate a separate service
Example request
Run ContextForge locally and register our git MCP server in itMCP
- Transport
- http, sse, stdio
- Authentication
- API key
Environment variables
JWT_SECRET_KEYrequired, secret- Secret for signing JWT tokens
AUTH_ENCRYPTION_SECRETrequired, secret- Secret for encrypting stored credentials
PLATFORM_ADMIN_EMAIL- Admin UI administrator login
PLATFORM_ADMIN_PASSWORDsecret- Admin UI administrator password
DATABASE_URLsecret- Database connection string, for example SQLite
Limitations
The gateway will not start without JWT_SECRET_KEY and AUTH_ENCRYPTION_SECRET, which must be generated first. It is a full service with a database; production needs Redis, auth and monitoring setup. It runs on your infrastructure and needs no external services by itself.
How to disable. Stop the container with docker stop mcpgateway or the mcpgateway process, and remove the gateway URL from client configs.
FAQ
How do I connect a stdio server?
Via the mcpgateway.translate module, which exposes a stdio server over SSE or HTTP so it can be registered in the gateway.
Is there an offline option?
Yes, the README describes an airgapped image build with MCPGATEWAY_UI_AIRGAPPED=true.
Discussion
No questions or reviews yet.
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README in short
The README describes the gateway by layer: protocols, API virtualization, registries, admin UI and observability. It gives quick starts via uvx, pip and Docker with secret and JWT token generation, plus API examples for registering servers. Then come configuration, cloud deployment, testing and troubleshooting. Apache-2.0 licensed.