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The MCP Gateway provides a centralized way to create, manage, and consume custom gateways that combine multiple MCP servers into a single endpoint. This allows you to cherry-pick specific tools from your connected services and expose them through a unified API.

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What is the MCP Gateway?

While the Tools library allows you to add individual MCP servers to your projects, the MCP Gateway takes this further by letting you:
  • Combine multiple MCP servers into a single, unified endpoint
  • Cherry-pick specific tools from each server instead of including everything
  • Authenticate once and use connections across unlimited gateways
  • Control access at the gateway level with Personal or Tenant visibility
  • Consume gateways externally via Cursor, Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or any MCP-compatible client

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Why Cherry-Pick Tools?

When you connect entire MCP servers to your AI, every tool definition consumes context tokens. This creates three problems:
  • Token Bloat: Large tool libraries can spend thousands of tokens on definitions alone, increasing costs before your AI even processes your request.
  • Context Window Depletion: Every token used for unused tools is a token unavailable for instructions, conversation history, or reasoning.
  • Decision Paralysis: When presented with 100+ options, AI models make worse decisions—they select suboptimal tools, combine them incorrectly, or hesitate when a clear choice exists.
By cherry-picking only the tools you need, your AI operates with precision rather than wading through irrelevant options.

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Connect Once, Use Everywhere

With the MCP Gateway, you authenticate into an app once. That connection is then available across every gateway you create:
  • Connect to Microsoft 365 once, use it in your development gateway, support gateway, and analytics gateway
  • Update credentials in one place, automatically propagate to all gateways
  • No more juggling OAuth flows across different configurations

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Access Control and Visibility

The MCP Gateway supports two visibility levels:
  • Personal: Gateway is only visible and usable by you
  • Tenant: Gateway is available to all users in your organization
Administrators with Platform Admin or MCP Admin roles can:
  • Restrict which MCP servers are available to users
  • Grant or revoke access to specific servers
  • Promote gateways from Personal to Tenant visibility
  • Authenticate into apps on behalf of end users without sharing credentials (delegated authentication)

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Observability and Logging

The MCP Gateway provides visibility into gateway usage and activity:
  • For Administrators: Full visibility across the entire tenant, including all gateways (both Personal and Tenant-level), usage metrics, request logs, and activity across all users.
  • For End Users: Visibility limited to your own Personal gateways, including usage metrics and request history for gateways you created.
This scoped visibility ensures end users can monitor their own gateway performance while administrators maintain oversight of all MCP Gateway activity within the organization.

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Getting Started

  1. In the Airia platform sidebar, expand the Gateway section.
  2. Click MCP Gateway to see the submenu.
  3. Select Gateway List to view and manage your gateways.
  4. Select Server Management to curate which MCP servers are available to end users (requires admin access). This allows administrators to control the list of approved servers that end users can include in their Personal gateways, preventing access to applications that should be restricted.

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Connect Your Services

  1. Navigate to Gateway > MCP Gateway > Server Management.
  2. Browse the catalog of 175+ verified MCP applications.
  3. Click on an application to initiate the connection.
  4. For OAuth-based apps, complete the authentication flow. For API key-based apps, enter your credentials.
  5. Once connected, the integration is saved to your account.

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Create a Gateway

  1. Navigate to Gateway > MCP Gateway > Gateway List.
  2. Click New Gateway.
  3. Enter a descriptive name for your gateway (e.g., “Development Tools”, “Customer Support”).
  4. Select which connected apps to include.
  5. Cherry-pick specific tools from each app—include only what you need.
  6. Choose visibility: Personal or Tenant.
  7. Click Create to save your gateway.

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Edit a Gateway

Gateways are designed to evolve with your needs:
  • Start small, grow later: Begin with 2-3 essential tools, then add more as your workflow expands.
  • Start large, refine over time: Include all tools initially, then prune unused ones based on actual usage.
To edit a gateway, click on it in the Gateway List and modify the connected apps, selected tools, or visibility settings.

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Using Your Gateway

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Within the Airia Platform

Your gateways are automatically available in the pipeline builder:
  1. Add a model node to your pipeline.
  2. In the Tools section, select MCP Tools.
  3. Choose your gateway from the dropdown.
  4. Select which tools from that gateway to make available to the model.

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With External MCP Clients

Your gateway provides an SSE endpoint for external tools. Choose your client below:

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Cursor IDE

Add to your ~/.cursor/mcp.json: 
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "airia-gateway": {
      "type": "sse",
      "url": "https://mcpg.airia.com/gateway/{your-gateway-id}/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "X-API-Key": "your-api-key-here"
      }
    }
  }
}

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Claude Desktop

Add to your Claude Desktop configuration file:
  • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
  • Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "airia-gateway": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "mcp-remote",
        "https://mcpg.airia.com/gateway/{your-gateway-id}/mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}

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Claude Code

Run the following command: 
claude mcp add --transport http "airia-gateway" https://mcpg.airia.com/gateway/{your-gateway-id}/mcp

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Advanced: Radar (Dynamic Tool Discovery)

For gateways with large tool libraries (50+ tools), enable Radar to dynamically discover and deliver only relevant tools based on each request.

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How Radar Works

  1. Analyzes the incoming request to understand what capabilities are needed.
  2. Searches your full tool library to find the most relevant matches.
  3. Dynamically caches frequently-used tools for fast retrieval.
  4. Delivers only the relevant tools to your AI model.

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Enabling Radar

Change /mcp to /radar in your gateway URL: 
Standard: https://mcpg.airia.com/gateway/{your-gateway-id}/mcp
Radar:    https://mcpg.airia.com/gateway/{your-gateway-id}/radar

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When to Use Radar

ScenarioRecommendation
Gateways with 50+ toolsUse Radar
Multi-domain gatewaysUse Radar
Cost-sensitive applicationsUse Radar
Focused gateways (20 tools)Standard /mcp
Single-purpose integrationsStandard /mcp
Beta testers report 60-80% reduction in token usage for tool definitions when using Radar.

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Best Practices

Begin with 2-3 integrations you’ll use most frequently, then expand as needed.
For each app, ask: “Which specific tools will my AI actually use?”
Instead of one mega-gateway, create focused gateways:
  • Development Gateway: GitHub + Linear + Slack
  • Support Gateway: Zendesk + Notion + Slack
  • Analytics Gateway: Google Analytics + BigQuery + Sheets
After using a gateway, review which tools are called, remove unused ones, and add tools you wish you had.
If your gateway has more than 20 tools, enable Radar for significant performance gains.

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Security

Verified Applications

175+ verified MCP applications with security-scanned code and continuous monitoring

SOC 2 Compliant

SOC 2 Type II compliant infrastructure

End-to-End Encryption

All credentials and tokens are encrypted end-to-end

Tenant Isolation

No credential sharing between tenants
All administrative actions are audit logged for compliance and security review.