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mcp-catalogue

by Aidan-Kay
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TypeScript
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mcp-catalogue

Browse-first MCP middleware — an LLM-friendly catalogue for discovering and invoking MCP tools across multiple services.

AI agents (Open WebUI, n8n, etc.) use this as a single MCP endpoint to browse, inspect, and call tools from many upstream MCP servers — without flooding their context with every tool schema upfront.

How It Works

Instead of connecting every MCP server directly (and loading all their tool schemas at session start), agents connect to one catalogue server and discover tools on demand:

browse_services              → [{id: "todoist", name: "Todoist"}, {id: "outlook", ...}]
browse_tools("todoist")      → ["todoist__get-task", "todoist__create-task", ...]
get_schemas(["todoist__get-task"])  → [full input schema]
call_tool("todoist__get-task", {id: "123"}) → result

Related MCP server: ThinMCP

Quick Start

Prerequisites

  • Node.js 22+

  • An MCP server to point it at (or use the included smoke test)

Install & Run

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Copy a config (or create your own)
cp mcp-catalogue.dev.yaml mcp-catalogue.yaml

# Start in dev mode (with hot reload)
npm run dev

# Or with a custom config path and verbose logging
npx tsx src/index.ts --config ./mcp-catalogue.dev.yaml --verbose

Verify It's Running

# Health check
curl http://localhost:8050/health

# Quick smoke test
node smoke-test.mjs

Configuration

Create a mcp-catalogue.yaml file:

port: 8050
auth:
  enabled: false # Set to true and provide a token in production
  token: ""
  allowedOrigins: # Optional — restrict CORS to these origins when auth is on
    - https://openwebui.local

connectors:
  httpReuseIdleTimeoutSeconds: 300 # Reap idle upstream HTTP sessions after N seconds

sources:
  - id: todoist
    name: Todoist
    description: Task and project management
    transport: http
    url: http://todoist-mcp:8081/mcp
    filter: ["*"] # Glob patterns — only index matching tools

  - id: outlook
    name: Outlook
    description: Email and calendar
    transport: stdio
    command: npx
    args: ["-y", "@softeria/ms-365-mcp-server"]
    env:
      API_KEY: "your-key"

Config Reference

Field

Description

port

HTTP port for the MCP endpoint (default: 8050)

auth.enabled

Require Authorization: Bearer <token> header

auth.token

Static bearer token (override via MCP_CATALOGUE_AUTH_TOKEN env var)

auth.allowedOrigins

Optional list of origins allowed via CORS when auth is enabled. If omitted, the request Origin is reflected back

connectors.httpReuseIdleTimeoutSeconds

Idle timeout before a cached upstream HTTP session is reaped (default: 300)

sources[].id

Unique identifier for the source (used in namespaced tool names)

sources[].transport

"http" for Streamable HTTP, "stdio" for subprocess

sources[].url

Upstream MCP server URL (required for HTTP transport)

sources[].command

Executable to spawn (required for stdio transport)

sources[].filter

Optional glob patterns to curate which tools are indexed

Sample configs are included:

Docker

# Build
npm run docker:build

# Run
docker run -d \
  --name mcp-catalogue \
  -p 8050:8050 \
  -v ./mcp-catalogue.yaml:/app/mcp-catalogue.yaml \
  -e MCP_CATALOGUE_AUTH_TOKEN=your-token \
  mcp-catalogue

Or use the provided Dockerfile directly:

docker build -t mcp-catalogue .

MCP Tools

The catalogue exposes these tools to connected AI agents:

Tool

What it does

browse_services

List all available upstream services with descriptions and tool counts

browse_tools

List all tools for a specific service (namespaced names)

get_schemas

Get full input schemas for one or more tools in bulk

call_tool

Call a tool on an upstream service (passes through the result)

index

Diagnostic — shows index summary, source availability, and error info

Architecture

AI Agent ──Streamable HTTP──▶ mcp-catalogue ──HTTP/stdio──▶ todoist, outlook, ...
                                  │
                              In-memory index
                              Session management

  • Transport: MCP Streamable HTTP (2025-11-05)

  • Auth: Optional bearer token, with optional CORS origin allowlist

  • Health: GET /health endpoint for monitoring (Uptime Kuma, etc.)

  • HTTP connection reuse: keep-alive sessions per source, reaped after an idle timeout

Project Structure

src/
  index.ts              Entry point with CLI args
  config.ts             YAML loader with Zod validation
  types.ts              Shared types and interfaces
  logger.ts             Structured logger
  namespace.ts          Tool name namespacing (<sourceId>__<toolName>)
  indexer.ts            Startup index — fetches tools/list from all sources
  catalogue-server.ts   MCP server — tool definitions and request handling
  sources/
    http-source.ts      HTTP transport client (Streamable HTTP)
    stdio-source.ts     Stdio transport client (subprocess, JSON-RPC)

Scripts

Command

Description

npm run dev

Run with hot reload via tsx watch

npm start

Run without watch

npm run build

Compile TypeScript to dist/

npm run docker:build

Build Docker image

npm run docker:run

Run Docker container

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