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What is an MCP gateway and do I need one?

Blog post from Speakeasy

Post Details
Company
Date Published
Author
Nolan Sullivan
Word Count
3,266
Language
English
Hacker News Points
-
Summary

An MCP gateway centralizes AI agent-tool connections to address the integration challenges of managing multiple OAuth implementations and audit trails across numerous servers and agents. There are three primary types of MCP gateways: infrastructure-first, which focus on routing and deployment with basic governance features; governance-first, which emphasize enterprise controls like audit trails and compliance; and hybrid gateways that combine governance with managed integrations or deployment services. These gateways differ from API gateways as they handle stateful workflows and enforce policies at the function and parameter level, introducing unique capabilities like semantic policies, human-in-the-loop workflows, and identity mediation. The choice of an MCP gateway depends on specific needs, whether for routing infrastructure (such as Microsoft and Docker), enterprise compliance (such as TrueFoundry and Lunar.dev), or prebuilt integrations (such as Composio and Gram). Gram also offers unique functionality by generating MCP servers from OpenAPI documents, facilitating efficient toolset creation and serverless deployment.