Static MCP

Documentation

Agentgateway

MCP

Static MCP

Route to a static Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. For more information, see the About MCP topic.

Before you begin

Follow the Get started guide to install kgateway with agentgateway enabled.

Make sure that agentgateway is enabled in kgateway.

helm get values kgateway -n kgateway-system -o yaml

Example output:


agentgateway:
  enabled: true

Step 1: Deploy an MCP server

Deploy a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that you want agentgateway to proxy traffic to. The following example sets up a simple MCP server with one tool, fetch, that retrieves the content of a website URL that you pass in.

Create the MCP server workload. Notice that the Service uses the appProtocol: kgateway.dev/mcp setting. This way, kgateway configures the agentgateway proxy to use MCP for the Backend that you create in the next step.

kubectl apply -f- <<EOF
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: mcp-website-fetcher
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: mcp-website-fetcher
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: mcp-website-fetcher
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: mcp-website-fetcher
        image: ghcr.io/peterj/mcp-website-fetcher:main
        imagePullPolicy: Always
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: mcp-website-fetcher
  labels:
    app: mcp-website-fetcher
spec:
  selector:
    app: mcp-website-fetcher
  ports:
  - port: 80
    targetPort: 8000
    appProtocol: kgateway.dev/mcp
EOF

Create a Backend that sets up the agentgateway target details for the MCP server.

kubectl apply -f- <<EOF
apiVersion: gateway.kgateway.dev/v1alpha1
kind: Backend
metadata:
  name: mcp-backend
spec:
  type: MCP
  mcp:
    name: mcp-server
    targets:
    - static:
        name: mcp-target
        host: mcp-website-fetcher.default.svc.cluster.local
        port: 80
        protocol: SSE   
EOF

Step 2: Route with agentgateway

Route to the MCP server with agentgateway.

Create a Gateway resource that uses the agentgateway GatewayClass. Kgateway automatically spins up an agentgateway proxy for you.

kubectl apply -f- <<EOF
apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Gateway
metadata:
  name: agentgateway
spec:
  gatewayClassName: agentgateway
  listeners:
  - protocol: HTTP
    port: 8080
    name: http
    allowedRoutes:
      namespaces:
        from: All
EOF

Verify that the Gateway is created successfully. You can also review the external address that is assigned to the Gateway. Note that depending on your environment it might take a few minutes for the load balancer service to be assigned an external address. If you are using a local Kind cluster without a load balancer such as metallb, you might not have an external address.
```
kubectl get gateway agentgateway
```
Example output:
```
NAME            CLASS          ADDRESS                                  PROGRAMMED   AGE
agentgateway   agentgateway   1234567890.us-east-2.elb.amazonaws.com   True         93s
```

Create an HTTPRoute resource that routes to the Backend that you created in the previous step.

kubectl apply -f- <<EOF
apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: HTTPRoute
metadata:
  name: mcp
spec:
  parentRefs:
  - name: agentgateway
  rules:
    - backendRefs:
      - name: mcp-backend
        group: gateway.kgateway.dev
        kind: Backend   
EOF

Step 3: Verify the connection

Use the MCP Inspector tool to verify that you can connect to your sample MCP server through agentgateway.

Get the agentgateway address.

export INGRESS_GW_ADDRESS=$(kubectl get gateway agentgateway -o=jsonpath="{.status.addresses[0].value}")
echo $INGRESS_GW_ADDRESS

kubectl port-forward deployment/agentgateway 8080:8080

From the terminal, run the MCP Inspector command. Then, the MCP Inspector opens in your browser.
```
npx modelcontextprotocol/inspector#0.16.2
```
From the MCP Inspector menu, connect to your agentgateway address as follows:
- Transport Type: Select Streamable HTTP.
- URL: Enter the agentgateway address and the /mcp path, such as ${INGRESS_GW_ADDRESS}/mcp or http://localhost:8080/mcp.
- Click Connect.
From the menu bar, click the Tools tab. Then from the Tools pane, click List Tools and select the fetch tool.
From the fetch pane, in the url field, enter a website URL, such as https://lipsum.com/, and click Run Tool.
Verify that you get back the fetched URL content.

Cleanup

You can remove the resources that you created in this guide.

kubectl delete Deployment mcp-website-fetcher
kubectl delete Service mcp-website-fetcher
kubectl delete Backend mcp-backend
kubectl delete Gateway agentgateway
kubectl delete HTTPRoute mcp

Dynamic MCP