🚀 MCPlex — The MCP Smart Gateway

Semantic tool routing • Security guardrails • Real-time observability

Stop dumping 50k tokens of tool definitions into your LLM's context window. MCPlex intelligently routes only the tools your agent actually needs.

The Problem

Every developer building multi-agent AI systems with MCP hits the same wall:

Related MCP server: Bifrost-MCP Gateway

The Solution

MCPlex is a single-binary Rust gateway that sits between your AI agent and MCP servers:

Your Agent ──→ MCPlex Gateway ──→ GitHub MCP     (stdio — persistent)
                    │           ──→ Slack MCP      (stdio — persistent)
                    │           ──→ Database MCP   (HTTP)
                    │           ──→ Filesystem MCP  (stdio — persistent)
                    ▼
            🧠 Smart Routing (70-90% token savings)
            🔒 RBAC + Audit Logs + API Key Auth
            📊 Real-time Dashboard + Prometheus
            📦 Response Caching (auto-detect read-only)
            🔑 Multi-Tenant (API key → role mapping)
            🔥 Hot-reload Config

Transport Support

MCPlex supports both MCP transport types as a first-class citizen:

Stdio servers are spawned at startup and kept alive for the gateway's lifetime. The MCP handshake (initialize → notifications/initialized) runs once, then all subsequent tools/call, resources/read, and prompts/get requests are multiplexed over the same stdin/stdout pipe using JSON-RPC ID correlation.

⚡ Quick Start

1. Install (Pre-built Binary)

Download the latest release from GitHub Releases:

# Linux / macOS
curl -LO https://github.com/ModernOps888/mcplex/releases/latest/download/mcplex-linux-x86_64
chmod +x mcplex-linux-x86_64
sudo mv mcplex-linux-x86_64 /usr/local/bin/mcplex

2. Build from Source

git clone https://github.com/modernops888/mcplex.git
cd mcplex
cargo build --release

3. Configure

cp mcplex.toml my-config.toml
# Edit my-config.toml with your MCP servers

Minimal config for stdio servers:

[gateway]
listen = "127.0.0.1:3100"
dashboard = "127.0.0.1:9090"

[router]
strategy = "semantic"

[[servers]]
name = "filesystem"
command = "npx"
args = ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem", "/tmp"]

[[servers]]
name = "memory"
command = "npx"
args = ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-memory"]

4. Run

./target/release/mcplex --config my-config.toml

# Expected output:
# 🔌 Spawning stdio server 'filesystem': npx ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem", "/tmp"]
# 🤝 MCP handshake complete for 'filesystem'
# 📡 Server 'filesystem': 11 tools, 0 resources, 0 prompts
# 🔌 Spawning stdio server 'memory': npx ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-memory"]
# 🤝 MCP handshake complete for 'memory'
# 📡 Server 'memory': 3 tools, 0 resources, 0 prompts
# ⚡ MCPlex gateway listening on 127.0.0.1:3100

5. Connect Your Agent

Point your MCP client to http://127.0.0.1:3100/mcp and open the dashboard at http://127.0.0.1:9090.

🚀 Running as a Service (Deployment)

For persistent environments, run MCPlex as a background service to ensure it starts automatically on boot and restarts if it crashes.

Linux (systemd)

Create a systemd unit file at /etc/systemd/system/mcplex.service:

[Unit]
Description=MCPlex Gateway
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=your_user
WorkingDirectory=/path/to/mcplex
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/mcplex --config /path/to/mcplex/mcplex.toml
Restart=always
RestartSec=3

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enable and start the service:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable mcplex
sudo systemctl start mcplex
sudo systemctl status mcplex

macOS (launchd)

Create a launchd plist file at ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.modernops.mcplex.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.modernops.mcplex</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/usr/local/bin/mcplex</string>
        <string>--config</string>
        <string>/path/to/mcplex.toml</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <true/>
    <key>StandardOutPath</key>
    <string>/tmp/mcplex.log</string>
    <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
    <string>/tmp/mcplex-error.log</string>
    <key>EnvironmentVariables</key>
    <dict>
        <key>PATH</key>
        <string>/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin</string>
    </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

Load and start the service:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.modernops.mcplex.plist
launchctl start com.modernops.mcplex

Log Rotation

When running as a service, ensure you implement log rotation to prevent infinite log growth. For macOS, add an entry to /etc/newsyslog.conf; for Linux, use logrotate. MCPlex also has built-in audit log rotation configured via max_log_size_mb.

Service Troubleshooting

🔌 How to Connect Your Agent

MCPlex is a transparent MCP proxy — any MCP client that supports Streamable HTTP can connect to it. Your agent talks to MCPlex as if it were a single MCP server, and MCPlex handles multiplexing, routing, and security behind the scenes.

Claude Code / Claude Desktop (Recommended — stdio bridge)

Claude Code and Claude Desktop use stdio transport. MCPlex ships a cross-platform bridge (bridge.mjs) that translates stdio ↔ HTTP. Works on macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Add a .mcp.json to your project root (Claude Code auto-discovers it):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcplex": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/path/to/mcplex/bridge.mjs"],
      "env": {
        "MCPLEX_GATEWAY": "http://127.0.0.1:3100/mcp"
      }
    }
  }
}

For Claude Desktop, add the same config to claude_desktop_config.json.

VS Code / GitHub Copilot (agent mode)

VS Code supports MCP servers natively. Add a .vscode/mcp.json to your workspace (or run MCP: Add Server from the Command Palette) pointing at the MCPlex bridge:

{
  "servers": {
    "mcplex": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/path/to/mcplex/bridge.mjs"],
      "env": {
        "MCPLEX_GATEWAY": "http://127.0.0.1:3100/mcp"
      }
    }
  }
}

A ready-to-copy template lives at examples/vscode-mcp.json.

With the default meta-tool mode, Copilot's agent sees just 3 gateway tools (~200 tokens) instead of every tool definition from every connected server — the same 70–90% context savings apply inside your IDE session. Tool discovery happens on demand via mcplex_find_tools, and every call is still routed through RBAC, allowlists, audit logging, and the response cache.

Cursor / Windsurf / HTTP-capable MCP Clients

Clients that support streamable HTTP can connect directly:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcplex-gateway": {
      "url": "http://127.0.0.1:3100/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Custom Python Agent

import requests

GATEWAY = "http://127.0.0.1:3100/mcp"
HEADERS = {"Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"}  # Optional

# Initialize
resp = requests.post(GATEWAY, json={
    "jsonrpc": "2.0", "id": 1, "method": "initialize",
    "params": {"protocolVersion": "2025-11-25", "capabilities": {},
               "clientInfo": {"name": "my-agent", "version": "1.0"}}
}, headers=HEADERS)

# List all tools (MCPlex aggregates from all servers)
resp = requests.post(GATEWAY, json={
    "jsonrpc": "2.0", "id": 2, "method": "tools/list"
}, headers=HEADERS)
tools = resp.json()["result"]["tools"]

# Call a tool (MCPlex routes to the right server automatically)
resp = requests.post(GATEWAY, json={
    "jsonrpc": "2.0", "id": 3, "method": "tools/call",
    "params": {"name": "create_issue", "arguments": {"repo": "my-repo", "title": "Bug fix"}}
}, headers=HEADERS)

How It Catches Your Agent's Calls

MCPlex acts as a man-in-the-middle proxy for all MCP traffic:

Your Agent ──POST /mcp──→ MCPlex Gateway ──→ Upstream MCP Server
                              │                (persistent stdio or HTTP)
                              ├─ ✅ Auth check (constant-time API key compare)
                              ├─ 🚦 Rate limit check
                              ├─ 🧪 Input validation (name charset, 64KB / depth-16 args cap)
                              ├─ 🔒 RBAC + allowlist/blocklist (role bound to API key)
                              ├─ 📝 Audit log (every call)
                              └─ 📊 Metrics (latency, tokens, security events)

Every tools/call goes through the security engine and is logged. Every tools/list goes through the semantic router. There's no way to bypass it — if your agent uses MCPlex as its MCP endpoint, all calls are intercepted, checked, and logged.

🤖 Compatible AI Models

MCPlex is model-agnostic — it routes any MCP-compliant client traffic regardless of which LLM is driving it. These are the frontier models actively tested and validated with MCPlex:

The meta-tool pattern (3 gateway tools, ~200 tokens) is particularly effective with models that have smaller default context budgets — MCPlex's token savings become more impactful as model costs rise.

Context savings scale with model pricing. With GPT-6 Astra and Claude Opus 5.5 at frontier pricing, eliminating 40k tokens of tool definitions per request translates to measurable cost reduction at scale.

🧠 Semantic Tool Routing

The killer feature. Instead of dumping all tool definitions into your LLM's context, MCPlex uses a meta-tool pattern that works with every standard MCP client — no custom extensions needed:

How It Works

When your agent calls tools/list, MCPlex returns 3 lightweight meta-tools (~200 tokens) instead of all real tools:

Agent                        MCPlex Gateway
  │                               │
  ├──tools/list──────────────────►│  Returns: mcplex_find_tools, mcplex_call_tool,
  │                               │           mcplex_list_categories (~200 tokens)
  │                               │
  ├──mcplex_find_tools────────────►│  "store a memory"
  │◄──────────────────────────────┤  → [{name: "create_memory", desc: "...", inputSchema: {...}},
  │                               │     {name: "save_note", desc: "...", inputSchema: {...}}]
  │                               │
  ├──mcplex_call_tool─────────────►│  {name: "create_memory", arguments: {...}}
  │◄──────────────────────────────┤  → tool result (routed through security + cache + audit)

• mcplex_find_tools(query) — Search for tools by natural language intent. Returns matching tools with full schemas.

• mcplex_call_tool(name, arguments) — Execute a discovered tool. Routes through the full security/audit/cache pipeline.

• mcplex_list_categories() — Browse available tool categories (server groups) with tool counts.

This works with Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, and any other MCP client — no custom extensions or client-side plugins required.

Routing Mode

MCPlex supports three routing modes via router.mode:

Routing Strategy

Within metatool and legacy modes, MCPlex uses a routing strategy to rank tools:

• semantic — Character n-gram embeddings with cosine similarity (recommended)

• keyword — TF-IDF keyword matching (zero ML dependency)

• passthrough — No filtering (baseline)

[router]
mode = "metatool"            # "metatool", "passthrough", or "legacy"
strategy = "semantic"        # "semantic", "keyword", or "passthrough"
top_k = 5                    # Return top 5 most relevant tools
similarity_threshold = 0.3   # Minimum relevance score
cache_embeddings = true       # Cache for faster repeated queries

🔒 Security Engine

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

[security]
enable_rbac = true

[roles.developer]
allowed_tools = ["github/*", "database/query_*"]

[roles.admin]
allowed_tools = ["*"]

[roles.readonly]
allowed_tools = ["*/list_*", "*/get_*"]
blocked_tools = ["*/delete_*", "*/drop_*"]

Role trust boundary: a caller's role is only ever established server-side, from a verified api_key/api_keys match — never from anything a client sends in the request body. When enable_rbac = true and no api_key/api_keys are configured, every tool call is denied by default (no role can be established), and the gateway logs a startup warning so this isn't mistaken for a bug.

Per-Server Tool Blocklists

[[servers]]
name = "database"
url = "http://localhost:8080/mcp"
blocked_tools = ["drop_table", "delete_*", "truncate_*"]

Structured Audit Logging

Every tool invocation is logged as JSON Lines:

{"timestamp":"2026-04-10T10:00:00Z","event":"tool_call","tool_name":"github/create_issue","server_name":"github","duration_ms":342,"trace_id":"a1b2c3d4"}
{"timestamp":"2026-04-10T10:00:01Z","event":"tool_blocked","tool_name":"database/drop_table","reason":"security_policy","trace_id":"e5f6g7h8"}

📊 Real-time Dashboard

Built-in observability dashboard at http://localhost:9090:

• Global Metrics — Total requests, tool calls, errors, tokens saved

• Per-Tool Stats — Invocation count, avg/p50/p95/p99 latency

• Server Fleet — Connected servers, transport type, tool/resource/prompt counts

• Live Event Stream — Real-time feed of all gateway activity with latency tags

Glassmorphism design with animated gradients. Auto-refreshes every 3 seconds. Zero configuration.

By default the dashboard's /api/* routes are unauthenticated — fine for 127.0.0.1-only binds, but if you expose the dashboard beyond localhost, set gateway.dashboard_api_key so requests need an Authorization: Bearer <key> (or X-API-Key) header:

[gateway]
dashboard_api_key = "${MCPLEX_DASHBOARD_API_KEY}"

📦 Response Caching

Avoid redundant upstream calls for read-only tools:

[cache]
enabled = true
ttl_seconds = 300     # 5 minute TTL
max_entries = 1000    # Max cached responses

Cached responses are partitioned by caller role, so a cache entry from one role/tenant is never served to another. MCPlex auto-detects read-only tools by prefix (list_*, get_*, search_*, query_*, describe_*, show_*). You can override with custom patterns:

[cache]
patterns = ["my_custom_tool", "expensive_*"]

Write operations (create_*, update_*, delete_*) are never cached by default.

🔑 Multi-Tenant API Keys

Map API keys to RBAC roles for team-based access:

[api_keys."sk-dev-team-abc123"]
role = "developer"
description = "Dev team key"

[api_keys."sk-admin-xyz789"]
role = "admin"
description = "Admin key"

When a request comes in with Authorization: Bearer sk-dev-team-abc123, MCPlex automatically applies the developer role's RBAC policies.

🔥 Hot-Reload Configuration

Config changes apply instantly — no restart needed:

# Edit config while MCPlex is running
vim mcplex.toml

# MCPlex automatically detects changes:
# 🔄 Config file changed, reloading...
# ✅ Configuration reloaded successfully

📖 Full MCP Capability Support

MCPlex aggregates and forwards all three MCP capability types from upstream servers:

Configuration Reference

[gateway]

[router]

[security]

[[servers]]

⚡ = One of command or url is required

Note: For stdio servers, command should be the executable path (e.g. npx, /usr/bin/python3). Additional arguments go in the args array.

Handshake timeout vs. request timeout: the initial stdio initialize handshake and steady-state tools/call requests use two independent timeouts. A slow-starting server (e.g. npx fetching a package on first run) can be given a longer handshake_timeout_secs without loosening the timeout applied to every later tool call:

[[servers]]
name = "slow-npx-server"
command = "npx"
args = ["-y", "@some/mcp-server"]
handshake_timeout_secs = 90  # default 30s, 0 = no timeout

[roles.<name>]

Glob Patterns: * matches any characters, ? matches a single character. Examples: github/*, */query_*, database/get_?ser

Environment Variables

MCPlex supports ${ENV_VAR} syntax in configuration:

[[servers]]
name = "github"
command = "npx"
args = ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-github"]
env = { GITHUB_TOKEN = "${GITHUB_TOKEN}" }

Architecture

┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                      MCPlex Gateway                        │
│                                                           │
│  ┌─────────────┐  ┌──────────────┐  ┌──────────────────┐ │
│  │  Semantic    │  │   Security   │  │   Observability  │ │
│  │  Router      │  │   Engine     │  │   Collector      │ │
│  │             │  │              │  │                  │ │
│  │ • Embeddings │  │ • RBAC       │  │ • Token Savings  │ │
│  │ • TopK Match │  │ • Allowlist  │  │ • Latency (p99)  │ │
│  │ • Caching   │  │ • Audit Log  │  │ • Dashboard      │ │
│  └──────┬──────┘  └──────┬───────┘  └────────┬─────────┘ │
│         └────────────┬───┘                    │           │
│                      ▼                        │           │
│      ┌───────────────────────────────┐        │           │
│      │     MCP Protocol Multiplexer  │◄───────┘           │
│      │     + Response Cache          │                    │
│      └──────────┬────────────────────┘                    │
└─────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────┘
                  │
    ┌─────────────┼─────────────────────┐
    ▼             ▼                     ▼
MCP Server    MCP Server           MCP Server
(stdio —      (stdio —             (HTTP —
 persistent)   persistent)          stateless)

CLI Reference

mcplex [OPTIONS] [COMMAND]

Commands:
  doctor                 Check the health of a running gateway and its connected servers

Options:
  -c, --config <FILE>    Config file path [default: mcplex.toml]
  -v, --verbose          Enable verbose logging
  --listen <ADDR>        Override gateway listen address
  --dashboard <ADDR>     Override dashboard listen address
  --check                Validate config and exit
  -h, --help             Print help
  -V, --version          Print version

🛡️ Production Hardening

API Key Authentication

Secure your gateway so only authorized agents can connect:

[gateway]
api_key = "${MCPLEX_API_KEY}"  # Set via environment variable

Clients authenticate via header:

Authorization: Bearer your-secret-key
# or
X-API-Key: your-secret-key

Health checks (/health) are always unauthenticated for load balancer probes.

Rate Limiting

Prevent runaway agents from overwhelming your servers:

[gateway]
rate_limit_rps = 50  # Max 50 requests/sec per client (burst: 100)

Uses a per-client token bucket with 2x burst allowance. Returns 429 Too Many Requests when exceeded.

Log Rotation

Audit logs rotate automatically — they won't fill your disk:

[security]
enable_audit_log = true
audit_log_path = "./logs/audit.jsonl"
max_log_size_mb = 100  # Rotates at 100MB, keeps 5 backups

Files rotate as: audit.jsonl → audit.jsonl.1 → ... → audit.jsonl.5 (oldest deleted).

Network Security

Bind to localhost only (default) for local agents:

[gateway]
listen = "127.0.0.1:3100"     # Localhost only
dashboard = "127.0.0.1:9090"  # Dashboard also localhost

For network access, use a reverse proxy (nginx/caddy) with TLS.

Prometheus Monitoring

MCPlex exposes Prometheus-compatible metrics on the dashboard port for external monitoring:

• /api/metrics — JSON metrics endpoint

• /api/prometheus — Prometheus text exposition format (v0.4.0)

mcplex_requests_total 1234
mcplex_tool_calls_total 567
mcplex_errors_total 3
mcplex_tokens_saved_total 45000
mcplex_tool_duration_ms{tool="create_issue",quantile="0.95"} 142

🔍 AgentLens Integration

MCPlex pairs with AgentLens for full-stack agent observability. MCPlex handles execution, AgentLens handles visualization — together they cover 100% of the agent lifecycle. As of v0.4.0, the AgentLens bridge is fully wired and active when configured via the [agentlens] config section.

Enable the Bridge (opt-in)

Add to your mcplex.toml:

[agentlens]
enabled = true
url = "http://127.0.0.1:3000/api/ingest"
session_name = "MCPlex Gateway"

Every tool call, security event, and routing decision is forwarded to AgentLens's timeline replay UI. The bridge is non-blocking (fire-and-forget) — it never slows down the gateway, even if AgentLens is offline.

Note: MCPlex works 100% independently without AgentLens. The bridge is entirely opt-in.

🔥 The Forge Integration

MCPlex pairs naturally with The Forge — a multi-agent orchestration and code evolution platform that pits frontier models head-to-head on coding challenges.

The Forge exposes its own MCP server, which means you can add it to MCPlex just like any other server:

[[servers]]
name = "forge"
command = "npx"
args = ["-y", "the-forge-mcp"]
allowed_tools = ["forge_orchestrate", "forge_build", "forge_score", "forge_consensus", "forge_research", "forge_chat"]
allowed_roles = ["developer", "admin"]

With this setup, your agents can invoke Forge tools (multi-model orchestration, code builds, consensus scoring, research synthesis) through the same gateway — with full RBAC, audit logging, and token-saving routing applied automatically.

MCPlex works 100% independently without The Forge. See github.com/ModernOps888/the-forge for setup.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please:

1. Fork the repository

2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)

3. Run cargo fmt && cargo clippy -- -D warnings && cargo test

4. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add amazing feature')

5. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)

6. Open a Pull Request

License

MIT License — see LICENSE for details.

🔧 Recent Changes (v0.7.3 — October 2026 Model Horizon & Security Hardening)

• Spoofed Role Header Stripping (CRITICAL) — auth_and_rate_limit_middleware now unconditionally strips any client-supplied X-MCPlex-Role header at middleware entry before evaluating authentication, preventing unauthenticated or single-key callers from spoofing X-MCPlex-Role: admin.

• Canonical FQN Security & Upstream Bare-Name Dispatch — dispatch_real_tool now resolves (server_name, bare_name) first, evaluates SecurityEngine::is_tool_allowed against the canonical server/tool FQN, keys ToolCache by bare tool name, and forwards the bare tool name to upstream MCP servers even when invoked via server/tool.

• Per-Server allowed_roles Enforcement — AllowlistEngine and SecurityEngine now enforce servers[].allowed_roles alongside tool-level RBAC rules, propagating trusted_role across tools/list (passthrough & legacy), mcplex_find_tools, and mcplex_list_categories.

• Stdio Child stderr Drain & kill_on_drop(true) — Stdio child processes now spawn a background task draining stderr to tracing::debug! so verbose upstream servers never deadlock on a full OS pipe buffer, and clean up child processes on drop.

• Hot-Reload Bare Filename Fix — watch_config now falls back to . when config_path.parent() is empty (e.g. --config mcplex.toml) and handles EventKind::Create for atomic editor saves.

• Dashboard XSS Hardening & HTML Serving — Escaped all dynamic server/tool/event fields in DASHBOARD_HTML, exempted GET / on the dashboard from header-only API key lockout so browsers can load the page shell, and fixed the 7-card .metrics-grid layout.

• AgentLens Bridge Live Wiring & Saturating Arithmetic — Wired state.agentlens into dispatch_real_tool and handle_meta_find_tools via non-blocking background tasks and fixed total_tools.saturating_sub(selected_tools) underflow.

• October 2026 Frontier Model Horizon — Updated README, mcplex.toml, and dashboard model matrix to October 2026 flagships (GPT-6 Astra, GPT-6.1 Sol, Claude Opus 5.5, Claude Sonnet 5.5, Claude Haiku 5.5, Claude Fable 5.1, Gemini 4 Argon, Gemini 3.8 Pro/Flash, DeepSeek V3 / R1, Grok 4.7, Llama 3.3 70B) and removed retired Claude 3.7 Sonnet.

• RBAC Self-Assertion Bypass Fixed (HIGH) — dispatch_real_tool previously fell back to a client-supplied _mcplex_role request param whenever no server-verified role was established (e.g. no api_key/api_keys configured). Any caller could self-assert role: "admin" and bypass RBAC entirely. The role now comes exclusively from the auth middleware's server-verified trusted_role.

• Dashboard Authentication — /api/* dashboard routes were previously unauthenticated. Added optional gateway.dashboard_api_key; when set, dashboard routes require a matching Authorization: Bearer/X-API-Key header. Unset by default (backward compatible), with a startup warning to bind localhost-only in that case.

• Role-Partitioned Cache — The tool response cache is now partitioned by caller role, closing a cross-tenant leakage gap in multi-key deployments.

• Empty-Secret Rejection — validate_config now rejects gateway.api_key/dashboard_api_key/api_keys that resolve to an empty string (e.g. from an unset ${ENV_VAR}), instead of silently turning "auth required" into a no-op.

• Configurable Stdio Handshake Timeout (fixes #20) — the initial initialize handshake and steady-state tool calls now use independent timeouts: security.default_handshake_timeout_secs (global, default 30s) and servers[].handshake_timeout_secs (per-server override) for the handshake, vs. security.request_timeout_secs for steady-state calls. Fixes spurious failures on slow-cold-start servers (e.g. npx downloading a package on first run). 0 = no timeout is now actually implemented for both.

• Audit Redaction List Expanded — added pwd, auth, cookie, session, bearer to the sensitive-key redaction list.

• 38 tests passing (up from 32) — new regression tests for the RBAC fix, cache partitioning, and handshake-timeout config.

• Compatible Models Dashboard Panel — Built-in dashboard now shows a 🤖 Compatible Models panel with colour-coded provider badges for all active frontier models.

• Ecosystem Footer — Dashboard footer now links to AgentLens, The Forge, and GitHub with the current MCP protocol version displayed.

• Expanded Server Examples — mcplex.toml and examples/ updated with memory, fetch, brave-search, postgres, sequential-thinking, and forge (The Forge MCP) server blocks.

• The Forge Integration — New README section with example config and tool table for connecting The Forge multi-model arena as an MCP server.

• Compatible AI Models Table — Full model matrix in the README with MCP client and use-case guidance.

• Fixed Python example protocol version 2025-03-26 → 2025-11-25.

• Fixed missing CHANGELOG comparison links for v0.4.0–v0.6.0.

• Audit Log Secret Redaction — Values under sensitive keys (password, token, api_key, secret, credential, etc.) are recursively replaced with [REDACTED] before hitting disk; credentials never persist in audit.jsonl.

• Spoof-Proof Rate Limiting — Client identity now comes from the real socket address (ConnectInfo), falling back to the first X-Forwarded-For hop only behind proxies; header spoofing no longer evades limits.

• Auth/Rate-Limit Denial Telemetry — auth_denied and rate_limited security events now recorded in metrics and visible in the dashboard event stream.

• Resource/Prompt Audit Coverage — resources/read and prompts/get are now written to the audit trail (resource_read / prompt_get events); resource URIs capped at 2048 chars.

• Panic Fix — tools/list in meta-tool mode no longer panics when fewer real tools than meta-tools are connected (saturating arithmetic).

• 2 new audit redaction tests (31 total); live smoke test verified end-to-end.

• Constant-Time API Key Verification — Key comparison is no longer vulnerable to timing side-channels.

• Trusted Role Binding — Multi-tenant API keys now bind their RBAC role at the middleware layer (X-MCPlex-Role injected server-side). Clients can no longer self-assert a role via _mcplex_role when authenticated.

• Tool Call Input Validation — Tool names are restricted to a safe charset (max 128 chars); arguments are capped at 64KB with a max JSON nesting depth of 16. Malformed calls are rejected before touching upstream servers.

• Request Body Limit — Gateway rejects request bodies over 1MB.

• Security Telemetry — New security_events, blocked_tool_calls, and rejected_tool_calls counters, surfaced as dashboard cards plus a live security-posture pill (RBAC/Audit status) in the header.

• VS Code / GitHub Copilot Integration — Documented .vscode/mcp.json setup with a ready-to-copy template (examples/vscode-mcp.json) for token-saving meta-tool routing inside IDE sessions.

• Dynamic Version Banner — CLI banner and dashboard header now display the crate version automatically.

• Shared HTTP Client — Replaced per-call reqwest::Client::new() with a pooled static client. Enables HTTP/2 connection reuse, TLS session resumption, and 30s request timeouts.

• Circuit Breaker Config — circuit_breaker_max_crashes, circuit_breaker_window_secs, and request_timeout_secs are now configurable in [security] (previously hardcoded).

• Env-Var Expansion Fix — ${ENV_VAR} expansion now uses a single-pass cursor instead of a while-loop, preventing infinite loops if a resolved value itself contains ${.

• Rate Limiter Memory Fix — Stale client IP entries are now pruned every 100 checks (entries idle >5 min), preventing unbounded HashMap growth.

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