---
title: "MCP Gateway"
sidebarTitle: "MCP Gateway"
---

The MCP Gateway provides a centralized way to create, manage, and consume custom gateways that combine multiple MCP servers into a single endpoint. This allows you to cherry-pick specific tools from your connected services and expose them through a unified API.

## What is the MCP Gateway?

While the [Tools library](/integrations/Tools/mcp) allows you to add individual MCP servers to your projects, the MCP Gateway takes this further by letting you:

- **Combine multiple MCP servers** into a single, unified endpoint
- **Cherry-pick specific tools** from each server instead of including everything
- **Authenticate once** and use connections across unlimited gateways
- **Control access** at the gateway level with Personal or Tenant visibility
- **Consume gateways externally** via Cursor, Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or any MCP-compatible client

## Why Cherry-Pick Tools?

When you connect entire MCP servers to your AI, every tool definition consumes context tokens. This creates three problems:

- **Token Bloat:** Large tool libraries can spend thousands of tokens on definitions alone, increasing costs before your AI even processes your request.
- **Context Window Depletion:** Every token used for unused tools is a token unavailable for instructions, conversation history, or reasoning.
- **Decision Paralysis:** When presented with 100+ options, AI models make worse decisions—they select suboptimal tools, combine them incorrectly, or hesitate when a clear choice exists.

By cherry-picking only the tools you need, your AI operates with precision rather than wading through irrelevant options.

## Connect Once, Use Everywhere

With the MCP Gateway, you authenticate into an app once. That connection is then available across every gateway you create:

- Connect to Microsoft 365 once, use it in your development gateway, support gateway, and analytics gateway
- Update credentials in one place, automatically propagate to all gateways
- No more juggling OAuth flows across different configurations

## Access Control and Visibility

The MCP Gateway supports two visibility levels:

- **Personal:** Gateway is only visible and usable by you
- **Tenant:** Gateway is available to all users in your organization

Administrators with Platform Admin or MCP Admin roles can:

- Restrict which MCP servers are available to users
- Grant or revoke access to specific servers
- Promote gateways from Personal to Tenant visibility
- Authenticate into apps on behalf of end users without sharing credentials (delegated authentication)

## Observability and Logging

The MCP Gateway provides visibility into gateway usage and activity:

- **For Administrators:** Full visibility across the entire tenant, including all gateways (both Personal and Tenant-level), usage metrics, request logs, and activity across all users.
- **For End Users:** Visibility limited to your own Personal gateways, including usage metrics and request history for gateways you created.

This scoped visibility ensures end users can monitor their own gateway performance while administrators maintain oversight of all MCP Gateway activity within the organization.

## Getting Started

### Navigate to the MCP Gateway

1. In the Airia platform sidebar, expand the **Gateway** section.
2. Click **MCP Gateway** to see the submenu.
3. Select **Gateway List** to view and manage your gateways.
4. Select **Server Management** to curate which MCP servers are available to end users (requires admin access). This allows administrators to control the list of approved servers that end users can include in their Personal gateways, preventing access to applications that should be restricted.

### Connect Your Services

1. Navigate to **Gateway > MCP Gateway > Server Management**.
2. Browse the catalog of 175+ verified MCP applications.
3. Click on an application to initiate the connection.
4. For OAuth-based apps, complete the authentication flow. For API key-based apps, enter your credentials.
5. Once connected, the integration is saved to your account.

### Create a Gateway

1. Navigate to **Gateway > MCP Gateway > Gateway List**.
2. Click **New Gateway**.
3. Enter a descriptive name for your gateway (e.g., "Development Tools", "Customer Support").
4. Select which connected apps to include.
5. Cherry-pick specific tools from each app—include only what you need.
6. Choose visibility: **Personal** or **Tenant**.
7. Click **Create** to save your gateway.

### Edit a Gateway

Gateways are designed to evolve with your needs:

- **Start small, grow later:** Begin with 2-3 essential tools, then add more as your workflow expands.
- **Start large, refine over time:** Include all tools initially, then prune unused ones based on actual usage.

To edit a gateway, click on it in the Gateway List and modify the connected apps, selected tools, or visibility settings.

## Using Your Gateway

### Within the Airia Platform

Your gateways are automatically available in the pipeline builder:

1. Add a model node to your pipeline.
2. In the Tools section, select **MCP Tools**.
3. Choose your gateway from the dropdown.
4. Select which tools from that gateway to make available to the model.

### With External MCP Clients

Your gateway provides an SSE endpoint for external tools. Choose your client below:

#### Cursor IDE

Add to your `~/.cursor/mcp.json`:

```json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "airia-gateway": {
      "type": "sse",
      "url": "https://mcpg.airia.com/gateway/{your-gateway-id}/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "X-API-Key": "your-api-key-here"
      }
    }
  }
}
```

#### Claude Desktop

Add to your Claude Desktop configuration file:

- **macOS:** `~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json`
- **Windows:** `%APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json`

```json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "airia-gateway": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "mcp-remote",
        "https://mcpg.airia.com/gateway/{your-gateway-id}/mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}
```

#### Claude Code

Run the following command:

```bash
claude mcp add --transport http "airia-gateway" https://mcpg.airia.com/gateway/{your-gateway-id}/mcp
```

## Advanced: Radar (Dynamic Tool Discovery)

For gateways with large tool libraries (50+ tools), enable Radar to dynamically discover and deliver only relevant tools based on each request.

### How Radar Works

1. Analyzes the incoming request to understand what capabilities are needed.
2. Searches your full tool library to find the most relevant matches.
3. Dynamically caches frequently-used tools for fast retrieval.
4. Delivers only the relevant tools to your AI model.

### Enabling Radar

Change `/mcp` to `/radar` in your gateway URL:

```
Standard: https://mcpg.airia.com/gateway/{your-gateway-id}/mcp
Radar:    https://mcpg.airia.com/gateway/{your-gateway-id}/radar
```

### When to Use Radar

| Scenario | Recommendation |
|----------|---------------|
| Gateways with 50+ tools | Use Radar |
| Multi-domain gateways | Use Radar |
| Cost-sensitive applications | Use Radar |
| Focused gateways (20 tools) | Standard /mcp |
| Single-purpose integrations | Standard /mcp |

<Note>
  Beta testers report 60-80% reduction in token usage for tool definitions when using Radar.
</Note>

## Best Practices

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="Start small, grow intentionally">
    Begin with 2-3 integrations you'll use most frequently, then expand as needed.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Cherry-pick ruthlessly">
    For each app, ask: "Which specific tools will my AI actually use?"
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Create purpose-specific gateways">
    Instead of one mega-gateway, create focused gateways:

    - **Development Gateway:** GitHub + Linear + Slack
    - **Support Gateway:** Zendesk + Notion + Slack
    - **Analytics Gateway:** Google Analytics + BigQuery + Sheets
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Iterate and refine">
    After using a gateway, review which tools are called, remove unused ones, and add tools you wish you had.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Use Radar for large libraries">
    If your gateway has more than 20 tools, enable Radar for significant performance gains.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

## Security

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Verified Applications" icon="shield-check">
    175+ verified MCP applications with security-scanned code and continuous monitoring
  </Card>
  <Card title="SOC 2 Compliant" icon="certificate">
    SOC 2 Type II compliant infrastructure
  </Card>
  <Card title="End-to-End Encryption" icon="lock">
    All credentials and tokens are encrypted end-to-end
  </Card>
  <Card title="Tenant Isolation" icon="building">
    No credential sharing between tenants
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

All administrative actions are audit logged for compliance and security review.

