Admin UI¶

MCP Gateway includes a built-in Admin UI for managing all entities in real time via a web browser.

🖥️ Accessing the UI¶

After launching the gateway (make serve or make podman-run), open your browser and go to:

http://localhost:4444/admin - or the corresponding URL / port / protocol (ex: https when launching with make podman-run-ssl)

Login using the BASIC_AUTH_USER and BASIC_AUTH_PASSWORD set in your .env.

🧭 UI Overview¶

The Admin UI is built with HTMX, Alpine.js, and Tailwind CSS, offering a dynamic, SPA-like experience without JavaScript bloat.

Technology Stack¶

All vendor libraries are bundled locally for air-gapped deployments with CDN fallbacks. See Air-Gapped Mode below.

It provides tabbed access to:

• Servers Catalog: Define or edit MCP servers (real or virtual)
• Tools: Register REST or native tools, configure auth/rate limits, test responses
• Resources: Add templated or static resources, set MIME types, enable caching
• Prompts: Define Jinja2 prompt templates with argument schemas and preview rendering
• Gateways: View and manage federated peers, toggle activity status
• Roots: Register root URIs for agent or resource scoping
• Metrics: Real-time usage and performance metrics for all entities
• 📊 Metadata Tracking: View comprehensive audit information in entity detail modals

✍️ Common Actions¶

All actions are reflected in the live API via /tools, /prompts, etc.

🔐 Auth + JWT from UI¶

Upon successful login, the UI automatically sets a secure JWT token as an HTTP-only cookie (jwt_token).

This token is reused for all Admin API calls from within the UI.

🔄 Live Reloading (Dev Only)¶

If running in development mode (DEV_MODE=true or make run), changes to templates and routes reload automatically.

🔒 Air-Gapped Mode¶

For environments without internet access, the Admin UI can load all CSS/JavaScript from local files instead of CDNs.

Enable Air-Gapped Mode¶

Set the environment variable:

MCPGATEWAY_UI_AIRGAPPED=true

How It Works¶

By default, the UI loads vendor libraries from CDNs (Tailwind, HTMX, Alpine.js, etc.). When MCPGATEWAY_UI_AIRGAPPED=true:

• All libraries load from mcpgateway/static/vendor/
• No external network requests for UI assets
• Identical functionality, fully offline

Container Builds (Recommended)¶

Containerfile.lite automatically downloads and bundles vendor assets during build:

docker build -f Containerfile.lite -t mcpgateway:airgapped .
docker run -e MCPGATEWAY_UI_AIRGAPPED=true -p 4444:4444 mcpgateway:airgapped

See Container Deployment for details.

Local Development¶

To test air-gapped mode locally without containers:

# Download vendor assets (one-time)
./scripts/download-cdn-assets.sh

# Run with air-gapped mode enabled
MCPGATEWAY_UI_AIRGAPPED=true make dev

The script downloads to mcpgateway/static/vendor/: