MCP Gateway

A guide to choosing an MCP gateway on two axes, the six deployment models available in 2026 and the five levels of governance depth.

TL;DR * The MCP authorization specification requires OAuth 2.1, mandatory PKCE, and a strict separation between the authorization server that issues tokens and the resource server (the MCP server) that validates them. * RFC 9728 protected resource metadata and RFC 8707 resource indicators bind an access token to one specific

TL;DR * MCP guardrails validate tool arguments before a call executes and tool results after it returns, a boundary that LLM-only content filters never inspect. * Bifrost evaluates MCP guardrail rules with CEL expressions matched against mcp_client, mcp_tool, and mcp_arguments, then routes matches to one or more

TL;DR * An MCP registry is a discoverable, versioned catalog of Model Context Protocol servers, listing each server's capabilities, authentication requirements, and status so engineers can find and use approved tools without ad-hoc requests. * The official MCP Registry launched in preview on September 8, 2025 as an

This guide walks through how a proxy handles a tool call, bridges stdio and Streamable HTTP, aggregates servers, and avoids the confused deputy and token passthrough risks named in the MCP spec, plus the signals that mean it is time for an MCP gateway

TL;DR: Connecting each MCP server directly to every client means duplicated configuration, scattered credentials, no shared access control, and hundreds of tool definitions loaded into every request.An MCP gateway aggregates every connected server behind one endpoint, so clients point at a single URL while the gateway handles discovery,