Manage MCP Servers

Local & Remote MCP Servers

Using the MCP Gateway gives you one policy-enforced entry point for both local and remote MCPs.

These are public, curated MCP servers indexed from the public MCP Registry. Your administrators can browse the catalog, review the available servers, and allow them for their projects.

Aspect	Local MCP servers	Remote MCP servers
Definition	Executable packages (npm, Python) run on the developer machine.	URL endpoints (HTTP/SSE) that the agent connects to.
Resolution	Fetched and cached from Artifactory via the MCP Gateway.	Referenced by URL; Gateway still enforces which remote servers are allowed.
Governance	Same tool policies and project scoping; binaries are scanned and versioned in Artifactory.	Same tool policies and project scoping; only approved remote URLs are routable.

Custom MCP Servers

These are private MCP servers registered from your organization's Artifactory repositories. They follow the same governance model but require validation before registration.

Governance Workflow

MCP Tool Policies provide granular control:

Define which specific tools within an MCP server users can invoke.
Use allow lists and deny lists with static text or regex patterns.
Choose between "allow all tools" or "select tools manually" for each server.
Override tool availability without unregistering the entire MCP server.
Admins can restrict (remove) any MCP server at any time, immediately revoking developer access.