MCP Ambassador Server

Centralized authentication, authorization, and audit for MCP tools. One server governs every downstream MCP your organization uses.

What Is This

MCP Ambassador Server is the control plane for managing MCP tools across your organization. It proxies, authenticates, authorizes, and audits every tool call between AI clients and downstream MCP servers. Think of it as what LiteLLM does for LLM providers, but for MCP servers.

Related MCP server: Multi-MCP Hub

Key Features

• MCP Marketplace -- Admin-published catalog of downstream MCPs with group-based visibility

• User Self-Service -- Users browse, subscribe to, and manage their own tool access through the web portal

• Per-User MCP Isolation -- Dedicated MCP instances per user with encrypted credential injection

• Group-Based RBAC -- Control which teams see which tools through group assignments

• Credential Vault -- AES-256-GCM encrypted per-user API keys with HKDF-derived keys

• OAuth 2.0 Integration -- Authorization code flow for downstream MCP authentication (GitHub, etc.)

• Admin Dashboard -- React SPA for managing users, groups, MCPs, and audit logs

• Audit Logging -- Append-only JSONL log of every authentication decision and tool invocation

• Kill Switches -- Instantly disable any MCP or client across the entire organization

• Docker Deployment -- Single container with bind-mount volumes and auto-generated TLS

Quick Start

Prerequisites: Docker Engine 20+, docker compose v2

git clone https://github.com/mcpambassador/server.git
cd server
cp .env.example .env
docker compose up

Open https://localhost:9443 -- the first-run setup wizard will guide you through creating an admin account.

Ports

For production deployment, see the Deployment Guide.

MCP Lifecycle

Every MCP goes through a four-step lifecycle before users can access its tools:

Create (draft/pending) --> Validate (draft/valid) --> Discover Tools --> Publish (active)

After publishing, users can browse the Marketplace, subscribe their clients to the MCP, and start using the tools through their AI clients.

Note: If an MCP requires per-user credentials (e.g., API keys), the Discover Tools step will prompt for temporary credentials to use during discovery. These are not stored.

Connecting a Client

Install the MCP Ambassador Client to connect AI tools to this server.

npm install -g @mcpambassador/client

VS Code configuration example:

{
  "mcp.servers": {
    "mcpambassador": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@mcpambassador/client", "--config", "/path/to/amb-client-config.json"],
      "env": {
        "MCP_AMBASSADOR_URL": "https://localhost:8443",
        "MCP_AMBASSADOR_PRESHARED_KEY": "amb_pk_YOUR_KEY"
      }
    }
  }
}

See @mcpambassador/client for Claude Desktop, OpenCode, and other integrations.

Monorepo Structure

Security

• TLS on all ports (self-signed auto-generated or CA-signed)

• Argon2id password hashing

• AES-256-GCM credential encryption with per-user HKDF-derived keys

• HMAC-SHA256 session tokens with configurable idle timeout

• Process isolation for stdio MCP child processes

• Non-root Docker container with read-only root filesystem

• Append-only audit log for compliance and forensics

Development

# Prerequisites: Node.js 20+, pnpm 8.15+
pnpm install
pnpm -r build
pnpm -r test
pnpm -r lint
pnpm -r typecheck
pnpm format:check

Related Projects

Configuration Reference

MCP Ambassador is configured via environment variables. All settings have production-ready defaults. See mcpambassador.ai/docs/configuration for the full reference.

Timing & Performance

These settings control session management, health monitoring, and internal scheduling. The defaults are tuned for production use with hundreds of concurrent sessions.

SPA Polling Intervals

The admin/user web portal polls the server for live data. These intervals balance responsiveness with server load.

Deployment Profiles

For client-side settings (heartbeat interval, cache TTL, catalog refresh), see @mcpambassador/client.

Contributing

We welcome contributions. See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

Prerequisites: Node.js 20+, pnpm 8.15+, Docker

Support

MCP Ambassador is free and open source. If it's useful to you, consider supporting development.

Support via GitHub Sponsors: https://github.com/sponsors/mcpambassador

Crypto donations:

• Bitcoin: 3QH4WQoQqnhU3LhbZQU8ttXaNco5Ge3xVp

• Ethereum: 0xa5462444c5AEf0B2e32822D9a9B7f91aC794FfF0

License

Apache License 2.0 -- see LICENSE.

Status

MCP Ambassador is at v0.8.0-beta.2. The API may change before 1.0. Production use is supported but expect breaking changes during the beta period.