mcp-center

MCP Center acts as a centralized registry and reverse proxy for multiple MCP servers. It provides a high-performance proxy layer that enables MCP clients to discover, authenticate, and connect to registered MCP servers through a single entry point. With support for MCP SSE and streamable transports, the center can route traffic to various MCP servers while enabling unified authentication and lifecycle management. Use the API endpoints exposed by MCP Center to register MCP servers, retrieve the list of registered servers, and establish proxied connections to specific servers via the central proxy.

Prerequisites:

• Docker installed (for containerized deployment) or a Rust toolchain if building from source
• A PostgreSQL database instance for the MCP Center backend
• Network access between MCP Center and PostgreSQL

Option A: Run via Docker

1. Ensure PostgreSQL is accessible and create a database for MCP Center
2. Start the container with required environment variables, replacing placeholders: docker run -d
   --name mcp-center
   -p 5432:5432
   -e MCP_ADMIN_TOKEN=your-admin-token
   -e POSTGRES_HOST=your-postgres-host
   -e POSTGRES_PORT=your-postgres-port
   -e POSTGRES_USERNAME=your-postgres-username
   -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=your-postgres-password
   -e POSTGRES_DATABASE=your-postgres-database
   nautilusops/mcp-center:latest

Option B: Build from source (Rust)

1. Install Rust toolchain (1.89.0 or later) and Cargo
2. Clone the repository and navigate to it: git clone https://github.com/nautilus-ops/mcp-center.git cd mcp-center
3. Build a release binary: cargo build --release
4. Run with a config file (bootstrap.toml) and environment variables set, e.g.: export MCP_ADMIN_TOKEN=your-custom-token export POSTGRES_HOST=your-postgres-host export POSTGRES_PORT=your-postgres-port export POSTGRES_USERNAME=your-postgres-username export POSTGRES_PASSWORD=your-postgres-password export POSTGRES_DATABASE=your-postgres-database ./target/release/mcp-center run --config bootstrap.toml

Environment variables are used to configure database access and admin credentials. If running behind a reverse proxy, ensure proper TLS termination and bearer token handling. The MCP Center supports multiple registry types and can be extended via plugins for tracing and monitoring. When using Docker, you can customize port mappings, database connection details, and admin token as needed. If you encounter connection issues to PostgreSQL, verify network access and credentials, and check the MCP Center logs for authentication or schema errors.