The mcp-gateway repository is an Envoy-based gateway implementation designed to aggregate and route multiple Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers behind a single endpoint. Written in Go, it integrates deeply with Kubernetes infrastructure through Gateway API and Istio, providing a unified interface for accessing distributed MCP server capabilities.
The project serves as a control plane for MCP server federation, enabling organizations to expose multiple backend MCP servers through a single gateway endpoint. The architecture consists of three main components: a Broker that handles MCP protocol operations, a Router that manages traffic distribution, and a Controller that discovers and configures servers dynamically. The gateway supports both standalone file-based configuration and Kubernetes-native operation through custom resources, allowing flexibility in deployment scenarios.
Authentication and authorization capabilities are central to the gateway's design. The system integrates with OAuth 2.0 providers like Keycloak for token validation and supports tool-level access control through group mappings. The gateway exposes OAuth protected resource discovery at a well-known endpoint, enabling clients to understand available authentication mechanisms and required scopes. Authorization policies can be attached to the gateway using Kubernetes AuthPolicy resources, providing fine-grained control over which users can access specific tools from backend MCP servers.
The Kubernetes integration leverages custom resources including MCPServer and MCPGatewayExtension. MCPServer resources define individual MCP servers to be aggregated, with each resource referencing an HTTPRoute that points to a backend service. The controller watches these resources, automatically discovers available servers, and generates aggregated configuration stored in ConfigMaps for the broker to consume. This declarative approach aligns with Kubernetes principles and enables GitOps-style management of gateway configuration.
Development activity shows strong engagement from the core team. David Martin leads with 748 tracked events, followed by shaneutt with 395 events and maleck13 with 328 events. The issue tracking data reveals 203 items labeled as triage/accepted and 159 marked as priority/normal, indicating active curation of the backlog. Across 458 tracked issues and pull requests, the median response latency is 0.0 hours with a mean of 60.0 hours, demonstrating responsive maintainership. The most common triage label is triage/needs-triage with 110 items, suggesting ongoing intake of new issues.
The repository connects to related projects through overlapping contributors, including opendatahub-io/notebooks, knative/eventing, and kuadrant/kuadrant-operator, indicating the gateway is part of a broader ecosystem within the Kuadrant project. The gateway supports deployment to multiple platforms including standard Kubernetes clusters and OpenShift, with dedicated installation scripts and documentation for each environment. The project includes comprehensive development tooling with make targets for local environment setup using kind clusters, automated test server deployment, and end-to-end testing infrastructure with Claude command integration for test development.
