Model Context Protocol (MCP) Concepts
Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open protocol that standardizes how AI applications — Claude Desktop, Claude Code, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code, and others — connect to external tools and data sources. Zuplo supports MCP in two directions, and this page explains both and when to use each.
Two ways to use MCP on Zuplo
| Feature | What it does | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| MCP Gateway | Proxies traffic to one or more upstream MCP servers. Handles OAuth, capability curation, and analytics. | You want to expose existing MCP servers (Linear, Stripe, internal services, etc.) to AI clients through one endpoint. |
| MCP Server handler | Turns your OpenAPI routes into an MCP server. Each route becomes an MCP tool, prompt, or resource. | You want to expose your own API as MCP so AI clients can call it as tools. |
The two features solve different problems and can live in the same project.
MCP Gateway: one front door for upstream MCP servers
The MCP Gateway fronts one or more remote MCP servers with a single, OAuth-protected endpoint. Users sign in once through your identity provider, the gateway brokers credentials to each upstream server, and every tool call lands in your analytics — without raw tokens ever reaching the AI client. It solves five problems that appear as soon as a team uses more than a couple of MCP servers: discovery, authentication, authorization, observability, and guardrails. See How the MCP Gateway works.
MCP Server: turn your API into tools
The MCP Server handler transforms the routes in your Zuplo project into MCP tools, prompts, and resources that AI systems can discover and invoke. It uses your existing OpenAPI specifications for tool descriptions and composes with Zuplo's authentication, rate limiting, and audit logging policies.
How MCP fits into Zuplo
Neither MCP feature is a separate runtime. Both are sets of policies and route handlers that run inside the same Zuplo platform that runs your REST and GraphQL APIs — the same OpenAPI-as-config model, deployment pipeline, and observability primitives described in How Zuplo Works. MCP traffic flows through the same request lifecycle, so policies like rate limiting and audit logging apply to it the same way they apply to any other route.
Next steps
- MCP Gateway quickstart — expose an upstream MCP server and connect Claude Desktop
- MCP quickstart for the MCP Server handler — turn an API into MCP tools
- Connect MCP clients — Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code, and others