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Quick Start Guide

Get MCP Gateway running locally in a Kind cluster.

Prerequisites

Quick Setup

Set the release version and run the setup script:

export MCP_GATEWAY_VERSION=0.6.0
curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Kuadrant/mcp-gateway/main/scripts/quick-start.sh | bash

The script checks prerequisites, then runs through each step automatically:

  1. Create Kind cluster with port mapping (localhost:8001)
  2. Install Gateway API CRDs and Istio as the Gateway API provider
  3. Create the Gateway with listeners and a NodePort service
  4. Install MCP Gateway CRDs, controller, and MCPGatewayExtension (the controller automatically deploys the broker-router)
  5. Deploy test MCP servers and register them with the gateway

Test with MCP Inspector

Once the script completes, you can use MCP Inspector to interact with the gateway. This requires Node.js and npm.

DANGEROUSLY_OMIT_AUTH=true npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector@0.21.1

Open the inspector at http://localhost:6274 and configure:

  • Transport: Streamable HTTP
  • URL: http://mcp.127-0-0-1.sslip.io:8001/mcp

Click Connect, then browse and test the available tools:

Tool Description
test1_greet Simple greeting
test1_time Current time
test1_slow Delay N seconds
test1_headers HTTP header inspection
test1_add_tool Dynamically add a new tool
test2_hello_world Greeting from server 2
test2_time Current time from server 2
test2_headers HTTP headers from server 2
test2_auth1234 Auth test from server 2
test2_slow Delay from server 2
test2_set_time Set time from server 2
test2_pour_chocolate_into_mold Chocolate mold from server 2

Cleanup

kind delete cluster

API Reference

Next Steps