IBM/mcp-context-forge
An AI Gateway, registry, and proxy that sits in front of any MCP, A2A, or REST/gRPC APIs, exposing a unified endpoint with centralized discovery, guardrails and management. Optimizes Agent & Tool calling, and supports plugins. observed · 2026-08-28
Health v2 · maintenance only
86/100
- Activity 99
- Release rhythm 98
- Longevity 34
How is this computed?
round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10) — computed 2026-09-03. Adoption (stars, forks) is never an input.
- gap_med: 14.0
- age_days: 482
- days_rel: 15
- days_push: 7
- n_releases_24m: 25
Adoption not part of the score
4372 stars · 839 forks observed · 2026-08-28
What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded
ContextForge is an open-source AI gateway, registry, and proxy from IBM that federates MCP, A2A, and REST/gRPC APIs behind a unified endpoint with centralized discovery, guardrails, auth, and observability. It optimizes agent and tool calling, supports 40+ plugins, and deploys via PyPI or Docker with Redis-backed federation on Kubernetes.
Use cases
- expose all my MCP servers through one gateway endpoint
- proxy and federate REST and gRPC APIs for AI agents
- add rate limiting and authentication to MCP tool calls
- centralize discovery and management of agents and tools
- add OpenTelemetry tracing to LLM agent traffic
- run a multi-cluster MCP registry on Kubernetes
- translate gRPC or REST services into MCP tools
- apply guardrails and plugins to agent tool calling
When to choose
- you need a unified gateway in front of many MCP, A2A, or REST/gRPC endpoints
- you want centralized auth, rate limiting, guardrails, and observability for AI tool traffic
- you deploy on Kubernetes and need federated, scalable tool registries
- you want plugin extensibility for custom transports and protocols
When to avoid
- you only need a single simple MCP server with no gateway features
- you want a lightweight client-side SDK rather than a self-hosted service
- your stack is not Python/Docker friendly and you need a managed SaaS gateway
Facets
service · maturity active
api-gateway proxy mcp agent-framework middleware auth rate-limiting tracing monitoring caching plugin-system webhook artificial-intelligence large-language-models apis developer-tools self-hosted backend python self-hosted cloud mcp-gateway a2a-protocol tool-registry federation guardrails opentelemetry fastapi grpc rest-proxy ai-gateway ai-agents devops docker kubernetes web-server
2 sources
- readme: https://github.com/IBM/mcp-context-forge · fetched 2026-08-28 · 11ee52c55019
- homepage: https://ibm.github.io/mcp-context-forge/ · fetched 2026-08-29 · 36c6c3c2e4f9
Member repositories
| Repository | Role | Health v2 |
|---|---|---|
| IBM/mcp-context-forge | main | 86 |
For agents
markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="IBM/mcp-context-forge")
Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00 · Report a problem