registry

# MCP Registry

The MCP registry provides MCP clients with a list of MCP servers, like an app store for MCP servers.

[**📤 Publish my MCP server**](docs/modelcontextprotocol-io/quickstart.mdx) | [**⚡️ Live API docs**](https://registry.modelcontextprotocol.io/docs) | [**👀 Ecosystem vision**](docs/design/ecosystem-vision.md) | 📖 **[Full documentation](./docs)**

## Development Status

**2025-10-24 update**: The Registry API has entered an **API freeze (v0.1)** 🎉. For the next month or more, the API will remain stable with no breaking changes, allowing integrators to confidently implement support. This freeze applies to v0.1 while development continues on v0. We'll use this period to validate the API in real-world integrations and gather feedback to shape v1 for general availability. Thank you to everyone for your contributions and patience—your involvement has been key to getting us here!

**2025-09-08 update**: The registry has launched in preview 🎉 ([announcement blog post](https://blog.modelcontextprotocol.io/posts/2025-09-08-mcp-registry-preview/)). While the system is now more stable, this is still a preview release and breaking changes or data resets may occur. A general availability (GA) release will follow later. We'd love your feedback in [GitHub discussions](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/registry/discussions/new?category=ideas) or in the [#registry-dev Discord](https://discord.com/channels/1358869848138059966/1369487942862504016) ([joining details here](https://modelcontextprotocol.io/community/communication)).

Registry Working Group:
- **Tadas Antanavicius** (PulseMCP) [@tadasant](https://github.com/tadasant)
- **Radoslav (Rado) Dimitrov** (Stacklok) [@rdimitrov](https://github.com/rdimitrov)
- **Bob Dickinson** (TeamSpark) [@BobDickinson](https://github.com/BobDickinson)
- **Preeti (Pree) Dewani** (Ravenmail) [@pree-dew](https://github.com/pree-dew)

## Contributing

We use multiple channels for collaboration - see [modelcontextprotocol.io/community/communication](https://modelcontextprotocol.io/community/communication).

Often (but not always) ideas flow through this pipeline:

- **[Discord](https://modelcontextprotocol.io/community/communication)** - Real-time community discussions
- **[Discussions](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/registry/discussions)** - Propose and discuss product/technical requirements
- **[Issues](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/registry/issues)** - Track well-scoped technical work  
- **[Pull Requests](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/registry/pulls)** - Contribute work towards issues

### Quick start:

#### Pre-requisites

- **Docker**
- **Go 1.24.x**
- **ko** - Container image builder for Go ([installation instructions](https://ko.build/install/))
- **golangci-lint v2.4.0**

#### Running the server

```bash
# Start full development environment
make dev-compose
```

This starts the registry at [`localhost:8080`](http://localhost:8080) with PostgreSQL. The database uses ephemeral storage and is reset each time you restart the containers, ensuring a clean state for development and testing.

**Note:** The registry uses [ko](https://ko.build) to build container images. The `make dev-compose` command automatically builds the registry image with ko and loads it into your local Docker daemon before starting the services.

By default, the registry seeds from the production API with a filtered subset of servers (to keep startup fast). This ensures your local environment mirrors production behavior and all seed data passes validation. For offline development you can seed from a file without validation with `MCP_REGISTRY_SEED_FROM=data/seed.json MCP_REGISTRY_ENABLE_REGISTRY_VALIDATION=false make dev-compose`.

The setup can be configured with environment variables in [docker-compose.yml](./docker-compose.yml) - see [.env.example](./.env.example) for a reference.

<details>
<summary>Alternative: Running a pre-built Docker image</summary>

Pre-built Docker images are automatically published to GitHub Container Registry. Note that the image does not bundle PostgreSQL, so you need to run your own and point the registry at it via `MCP_REGISTRY_DATABASE_URL` (see [docker-compose.yml](./docker-compose.yml) for a working example):

```bash
# Run latest stable release
docker run -p 8080:8080 ghcr.io/modelcontextprotocol/registry:latest

# Run latest from main branch (continuous deployment)
docker run -p 8080:8080 ghcr.io/modelcontextprotocol/registry:main

# Run specific release version
docker run -p 8080:8080 ghcr.io/modelcontextprotocol/registry:v1.0.0

# Run development build from main branch
docker run -p 8080:8080 ghcr.io/modelcontextprotocol/registry:main-20250906-abc123d
```

**Available tags:** 
- **Releases**: `latest`, `v1.0.0`, `v1.1.0`, etc.
- **Continuous**: `main` (latest main branch build)
- **Development**: `main-<date>-<sha>` (specific commit builds)

</details>

#### Publishing a server

To publish a server, we've built a simple CLI. You can use it with:

```bash
# Build the latest CLI
make publisher

# Use it!
./bin/mcp-publisher --help
```

See [the publisher guide](./docs/modelcontextprotocol-io/quickstart.mdx) for more details.

#### Other commands

```bash
# Run lint, unit tests and integration tests
make check
```

There are also a few more helpful commands for development. Run `make help` to learn more, or look in [Makefile](./Makefile).

<!--
For Claude and other AI tools: Always prefer make targets over custom commands where possible.
-->

## Architecture

### Project Structure

```
├── cmd/                     # Application entry points
│   └── publisher/           # Server publishing tool
├── data/                    # Seed data
├── deploy/                  # Deployment configuration (Pulumi)
├── docs/                    # Documentation
├── internal/                # Private application code
│   ├── api/                 # HTTP handlers and routing
│   ├── auth/                # Authentication (GitHub OAuth, JWT, namespace blocking)
│   ├── config/              # Configuration management
│   ├── database/            # Data persistence (PostgreSQL)
│   ├── service/             # Business logic
│   ├── telemetry/           # Metrics and monitoring
│   └── validators/          # Input validation
├── pkg/                     # Public packages
│   ├── api/                 # API types and structures
│   │   └── v0/              # Version 0 API types
│   └── model/               # Data models for server.json
├── scripts/                 # Development and testing scripts
├── tests/                   # Integration tests
└── tools/                   # CLI tools and utilities
    └── validate-*.sh        # Schema validation tools
```

### Authentication

Publishing supports multiple authentication methods:
- **GitHub OAuth** - For publishing by logging into GitHub
- **GitHub OIDC** - For publishing from GitHub Actions
- **DNS verification** - For proving ownership of a domain and its subdomains
- **HTTP verification** - For proving ownership of a domain

The registry validates namespace ownership when publishing. E.g. to publish...:
- `io.github.domdomegg/my-cool-mcp` you must login to GitHub as `domdomegg`, or be in a GitHub Action on domdomegg's repos
- `me.adamjones/my-cool-mcp` you must prove ownership of `adamjones.me` via DNS or HTTP challenge

## Community Projects

Check out [community projects](docs/community-projects.md) to explore notable registry-related work created by the community.

## More documentation

See the [documentation](./docs) for more details if your question has not been answered here!