Skip to content

🧰 Media Kit

Everything you need to write about ContextForge MCP Gateway-assets, ready-to-use copy, badges, images, and quick-start commands.


πŸ€” What is MCP (Model Context Protocol)?

MCP is an open-source protocol released by Anthropic in November 2024 that lets AI agents communicate with external tools through a standard JSON-RPC envelope. It's often described as the "USB-C of AI"-a universal connector for language models.

It's widely supported by GitHub Copilot, Microsoft Copilot, AWS Bedrock, Google Cloud AI, IBM watsonx, and 15,000+ servers in the community.

⚑ Why it matters

  • βœ… Standardized interface contracts via typed JSON Schema
  • βœ… Supported across the ecosystem - GitHub/Microsoft Copilot, AWS Bedrock, Google Cloud AI, IBM watsonx, AgentBee, LangChain, CrewAI, and more
  • βœ… Strong ecosystem - 15,000+ MCP-compatible servers and multiple clients, with announcements from multiple major vendors

❌ Current challenges

  • ❌ Fragmented transports: STDIO, SSE, HTTP - with some methods already deprecated
  • ❌ Inconsistent authentication: none, JWT, OAuth
  • ❌ Operational overhead: managing endpoints, credentials, retries, and logs for each tool
  • ❌ Version mismatch: clients and servers may support different MCP versions

πŸ’‘ Why ContextForge MCP Gateway?

Problem: Most teams build one-off adapters for each tool or model, leading to maintenance burden and slow development.

ContextForge MCP Gateway solves this by proxying all MCP and REST tool servers through a single HTTPS + JSON-RPC endpoint, with discovery, security, and observability built in.

It lets you create Virtual Servers - remixing tools/prompts/resources from multiple servers, introduce strong Auth - and change protocol versions on the fly. It lets you easily create new MCP Servers without having to write any code - by proxing existing REST services.

And is readily available as open source, published a container image and as a Python module published on PyPi - so you can get started with a single command - and scale all the way up to multi-regional Kubernetes clusters.

Pain Point How Gateway Solves It
Transport fragmentation (STDIO/SSE/HTTP) Unifies everything under HTTPS + JSON-RPC
DIY wrappers & retry logic Automatic, schema-validated retry handling
Weak auth layers Built-in JWT (or OAuth) & rate limiting
No visibility Per-call and per-server metrics & logging
Onboarding difficulties Built-in admin UI for tools, prompts, and resources

Architecture Overview


πŸ“‘ Sample Announcements

πŸ“£ Non-Technical Post

Meet ContextForge MCP Gateway: Simplify AI Tool Connections

Building AI agents should be easy-but each tool speaks a different dialect.

ContextForge MCP Gateway is a universal hub: one secure endpoint that discovers your tools and works seamlessly with Copilot, CrewAI, LangChain, and more.

"What should be simple often becomes a debugging nightmare. The ContextForge MCP Gateway solves that." - Mihai Criveti

Try it in 60 seconds:

docker run -d --name mcpgateway \
  -p 4444:4444 \
  -e JWT_SECRET_KEY=YOUR_KEY \
  ghcr.io/ibm/mcp-context-forge:0.6.0

Please ⭐ the project on GitHub if you find this useful, it helps us grow!

πŸ› οΈ Technical Post

Introducing ContextForge MCP Gateway: The Missing Proxy for AI Agents and Tools

ContextForge MCP Gateway normalizes STDIO, SSE, REST, and HTTP MCP servers into one HTTPS + JSON-RPC interface with full MCP support.

It includes schema-validated retries, JWT auth, and a built-in catalog UI.

Docker:

docker run -d --name mcpgateway \
  -p 4444:4444 \
  -e JWT_SECRET_KEY=YOUR_KEY \
  ghcr.io/ibm/mcp-context-forge:0.6.0

PyPI:

pip install mcp-gateway
mcpgateway --host 0.0.0.0 --port 4444

Please ⭐ the project on GitHub if you find this useful, it helps us grow!


πŸ› οΈ Connect Cline VS Code Extension to ContextForge MCP Gateway

A great idea is to create posts, videos or articles on using specific clients or with MCP Gateway. Provide details on how to run and register a number of useful MCP Servers, adding them to the gateway, then using specific clients to connect. For example, Visual Studio Cline, GitHub Copilot, Langchain, etc. Example:

Connect your Cline extension to MCP Gateway

ContextForge MCP Gateway offers a unified HTTPS + JSON-RPC endpoint for AI tools, making integration seamless-including with Cline, a VS Code extension that supports MCP.

Start the Gateway (Docker):

docker run -d --name mcpgateway \
  -p 4444:4444 \
  -e JWT_SECRET_KEY=YOUR_KEY \
  ghcr.io/ibm/mcp-context-forge:0.6.0

Or install via PyPI:

pip install mcp-gateway
mcpgateway --host 0.0.0.0 --port 4444

⭐ Enjoying this? Leave a star on GitHub!


πŸ” What is Cline?

Cline is a powerful AI coding assistant for VS Code. It supports MCP, allowing it to discover and use tools provided through MCP Gateway.


πŸ” Set up JWT Authentication

In your Cline settings, add an MCP server:

{
  "name": "MCP Gateway",
  "url": "http://localhost:4444",
  "auth": {
    "type": "bearer",
    "token": "<YOUR_JWT_TOKEN>"
  }
}

Enable the server in Cline-you should see a green "connected" indicator when authentication succeeds.


πŸš€ Using MCP Tools in Cline

With the connection live, Cline can:

  • Automatically list tools exposed by the Gateway
  • Use simple prompts to invoke tools, e.g.:

Run the `list_files` tool with path: "./src"
* Display results and JSON output directly within the VS Code interface

Try it yourself-and don't forget to ⭐ the project at ContextForge MCP Gateway!

πŸ–ΌοΈ Logo & Images

Asset URL
Transparent PNG logo https://ibm.github.io/mcp-context-forge/logo.png
Hero demo GIF https://ibm.github.io/mcp-context-forge/images/mcpgateway.gif
Architecture overview SVG

πŸ“£ Social Snippets

Tweet / X

Twitter / X

πŸš€ ContextForge MCP Gateway is now open source! One endpoint to unify & secure AI-tool connections (STDIO, SSE, REST). Give it a spin and drop a ⭐ β†’ IBM/mcp-context-forge #mcp #ai #tools

LinkedIn

Example

Thrilled to share ContextForge MCP Gateway-an open-source hub that turns fragmented AI-tool integrations into a single secure interface with discovery, observability, and a live catalog UI. Check it out on GitHub and leave us a star ⭐! #mcp #ai #tools

Tip

See Social for example articles and social media posts - and add your own there once published!