Manage MCPs via Agents

Because the MCP Gateway exposes its management capabilities directly to your IDE, you can interact with the JFrog MCP Registry through your AI agent's chat interface using natural language.

This allows the agent to dynamically discover, install, and configure its own tooling based on your active project policies.

Example Workflows

Discover, Inspect, and Install MCPs

Ask the agent to list available servers, inspect one, and install it, all from the chat:

1. "Which MCP servers are available for my project?" The agent queries the Gateway and returns only the servers your project admin has approved for your current project context.

2. For example, if filesystem MCP is available, you may ask:

   1. "Inspect the filesystem MCP server." The agent returns the server's metadata, required environment variables, runtime arguments, and any active tool policies (Allow or Deny lists).
   2. "Add the filesystem MCP server." The Gateway securely pulls and configures the server behind the scenes. If the server requires secret values (for example, API keys or connection strings), the agent returns a CLI command for you to run in your terminal so that the secret is never exposed in the chat. After the server is added, the agent automatically refreshes its available tools. You can start using the new MCP server immediately.

Switch Project

If you work across multiple projects, each with its own set of approved MCP servers and tool policies, you can switch contexts without leaving the IDE:

1. "Which project am I working in?" The agent displays your active project and any other projects you have access to.

2. "Switch to the data-engineering project." The Gateway immediately syncs the approved servers and tool policies for the new project. If any currently installed servers are not approved in the target project, the agent asks for confirmation before removing them.

Manage Your Local Environment

Keep your local setup organized through the chat:

• "What MCP servers do I currently have installed?" Review your active tools at any time.
• "Remove the Slack MCP server." Clean up servers you no longer need. The server and its stored credentials are removed immediately.
• "Update the environment variables for the GitHub MCP." Reconfigure a server without removing and reinstalling it.
• "Log in to the remote Jira MCP server using OAuth." Authenticate with remote HTTP-based servers directly from the chat. The agent returns a secure CLI command for any required credentials.

How Secrets Are Handled

When an MCP server requires sensitive configuration (marked as isSecret in the server's metadata), the agent cannot set the value directly. Instead, it returns a CLI command for you to copy and run in your terminal. This ensures that secrets such as API keys, tokens, and connection strings are never exposed in the agent chat history.

For more information, see MCP Gateway CLI.

Agent Capabilities

The following table maps each Gateway capability to an example prompt you can use in your agent chat.