fastmcp-gateway 0.1.1

Progressive tool discovery gateway for MCP, built on FastMCP

fastmcp-gateway

Progressive tool discovery gateway for MCP. Aggregates tools from multiple upstream MCP servers and exposes them through 3 meta-tools, enabling LLMs to discover and use hundreds of tools without loading all schemas upfront.

LLM
 │
 └── fastmcp-gateway (3 meta-tools)
       ├── discover_tools    → browse domains and tools
       ├── get_tool_schema   → get parameter schema for a tool
       └── execute_tool      → run any discovered tool
             ├── apollo      (upstream MCP server)
             ├── hubspot     (upstream MCP server)
             ├── slack       (upstream MCP server)
             └── ...

Why?

When an LLM connects to many MCP servers, it receives all tool schemas at once. With 100+ tools, context windows fill up and tool selection accuracy drops. fastmcp-gateway solves this with progressive discovery: the LLM starts with 3 meta-tools and loads individual schemas on demand.

Install

pip install fastmcp-gateway

Quick Start

Python API

import asyncio
from fastmcp_gateway import GatewayServer

gateway = GatewayServer({
    "apollo": "http://apollo-mcp:8080/mcp",
    "hubspot": "http://hubspot-mcp:8080/mcp",
})

async def main():
    await gateway.populate()     # Discover tools from upstreams
    gateway.run(transport="streamable-http", port=8080)

asyncio.run(main())

CLI

export GATEWAY_UPSTREAMS='{"apollo": "http://apollo-mcp:8080/mcp", "hubspot": "http://hubspot-mcp:8080/mcp"}'
python -m fastmcp_gateway

The gateway starts on http://0.0.0.0:8080/mcp and exposes 3 tools to any MCP client.

How It Works

1. discover_tools() — Call with no arguments to see all domains and tool counts. Call with domain="apollo" to see that domain's tools with descriptions.

2. get_tool_schema("apollo_people_search") — Returns the full JSON Schema for a tool's parameters. Supports fuzzy matching.

3. execute_tool("apollo_people_search", {"query": "Anthropic"}) — Routes the call to the correct upstream server and returns the result.

LLMs learn the workflow from the gateway's built-in system instructions and only load schemas for tools they actually need.

Configuration

All configuration is via environment variables:

Variable	Required	Default	Description
GATEWAY_UPSTREAMS	Yes	—	JSON object: {"domain": "url", ...}
GATEWAY_NAME	No	fastmcp-gateway	Server name
GATEWAY_HOST	No	0.0.0.0	Bind address
GATEWAY_PORT	No	8080	Bind port
GATEWAY_INSTRUCTIONS	No	Built-in	Custom LLM system instructions
GATEWAY_REGISTRY_AUTH_TOKEN	No	—	Bearer token for upstream discovery
GATEWAY_DOMAIN_DESCRIPTIONS	No	—	JSON object: {"domain": "description", ...}
GATEWAY_UPSTREAM_HEADERS	No	—	JSON object: {"domain": {"Header": "Value"}, ...}
LOG_LEVEL	No	INFO	Logging level

Per-Upstream Auth

If your upstream servers require different authentication, use GATEWAY_UPSTREAM_HEADERS to set per-domain headers:

export GATEWAY_UPSTREAM_HEADERS='{"ahrefs": {"Authorization": "Bearer sk-xxx"}}'

Domains without overrides use request passthrough (headers from the incoming MCP request are forwarded to the upstream).

Health Endpoints

The gateway exposes Kubernetes-compatible health checks:

• GET /healthz — Liveness probe. Always returns 200.
• GET /readyz — Readiness probe. Returns 200 if tools are populated, 503 otherwise.

Docker & Kubernetes

See examples/kubernetes/ for a ready-to-use Dockerfile and Kubernetes manifests.

# Build
docker build -f examples/kubernetes/Dockerfile -t fastmcp-gateway .

# Run
docker run -e GATEWAY_UPSTREAMS='{"svc": "http://host.docker.internal:8080/mcp"}' \
  -p 8080:8080 fastmcp-gateway

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for development setup, architecture overview, and guidelines.

License

Apache License 2.0. See LICENSE.