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MCP registries in Catalog (tech preview)

Tech Preview and uses: Catalog
This feature is currently in Tech Preview and should not be used in a production environment.
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on-prem
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Catalog
MCP traffic gateway
MCP clients in Insomnia

What is an MCP Registry?

An MCP Registry is a centralized publishing and discovery endpoint for MCP servers within your organization.

As organizations experiment with AI agents, MCP servers are often embedded directly into agent code, stored in local configuration files, or scattered across repositories. Over time, this can lead to MCP sprawl, making it difficult to understand:

  • What MCP servers exist
  • Which agents should use which servers
  • How those servers should be governed

MCP Registries extend Konnect Catalog to provide a structured, standards-based way to register and manage MCP servers, helping Platform Teams maintain visibility and control as AI adoption scales.

This feature is built on top of the MCP Registry API specification defined by Anthropic’s open source project. The specification allows flexibility in how registries are structured, so you can model them according to your organization’s governance needs.

Enable MCP Registries in Catalog

MCP Registries in Catalog are currently available in tech preview via Konnect Labs.

  1. In Konnect, click your organization dropdown and select “Manage organizations”.
  2. Click the Labs tab.
  3. Click Catalog - MCP Registry.
  4. Click Enable feature.

You can access MCP Registries by doing the following:

  1. In the Konnect sidebar, click Catalog.

  2. Click the MCP registries tab.

    If you’re using Catalog Classic, click MCP Registries in the sidebar instead.

Create an MCP Registry

  1. In the Konnect sidebar, click Catalog.

  2. From the New dropdown menu, select “MCP registry”.

    If you’re using Catalog Classic, click MCP Registries in the sidebar instead.

  3. In the Display Name field, enter a name for your registry, for example Production Registry.
  4. In the Name field, enter a unique identifier for the registry, for example production-registry. This must be lowercase and alphanumeric, and can include hyphens.
  5. (Optional) In the Description field, describe the purpose of this registry.
  6. Click Create.

Add an MCP server

An MCP server represents an agent-facing service definition. It describes:

  • What the server does
  • Its version
  • How agents can connect to it
  1. In the Konnect sidebar, click Catalog.
  2. Click the MCP registries tab.
  3. Click your MCP registry.
  4. From your MCP Registry’s detail page, click New MCP Server.
  5. (Optional) In the Title field, enter a short, descriptive name for the server, for example Filesystem Server.
  6. In the Name field, enter a unique identifier in reverse-DNS format, for example io.example/filesystem. This must contain exactly one forward slash.
  7. In the Version field, enter a version number using semantic versioning, for example 1.0.0.
  8. In the Description field, enter a description of what the server does.
  9. (Optional) Click Show optional fields, and do the following:
    1. (Optional) In the Schema URI field, enter a URI, for example https://example.com/schemas/server.json.
    2. (Optional) In the GitHub repository URL field, enter a URL, for example https://github.com/owner/repo.
    3. (Optional) In the Website URL field, enter a URL, for example https://example.com.
    4. (Optional) In the Metadata field, enter a JSON object, for example {"license": "MIT", "author": "Example Corp", "certified": true}.
  10. (Optional) To describe a run-it-yourself distribution option, such as an npm or PyPI package, click Add Package and do the following:
    1. From the Transport type dropdown menu, select an option. If you select “Streamable-HTTP” or “SSE”, also enter the transport URL.
    2. From the Registry type dropdown menu, select how you want users to download packages.
    3. In the Registry base URL field, enter https://registry.npmjs.org.
    4. In the Package identifier field, enter the base URL of the package registry, for example @modelcontextprotocol/mcp-server.
    5. (Optional) In the Package version field, enter a version, for example 1.0.0.
    6. Click Save.
  11. (Optional) To add a remote to describe a hosted MCP server endpoint that agents can connect to over the network, click Add Remote and do the following:
    1. From the Transport type dropdown menu, select “Streamable-HTTP” or “SSE”.
    2. In the Remote URL field, enter the MCP server’s endpoint, for example https://example.com/mcp.
    3. (Optional) In the Headers field, enter headers as a JSON array of objects, for example, to pass an authorization token: 
      [
  {
 "name": "Authorization",
 "value": "Bearer ${token}"
  }
]
    4. Click Save.
  12. Click Publish.

Packages and remotes

MCP servers are defined independently from a single deployment. They may include multiple delivery paths.

Packages

Packages describe run-it-yourself distribution options, such as:

  • npm packages
  • PyPI packages
  • OCI artifacts

These allow teams to install and run the MCP server within their own agent environments.

Remotes

Remotes describe hosted MCP server endpoints that agents can connect to over the network, such as:

  • streamable-http
  • sse

An MCP server can define multiple packages and multiple remotes simultaneously. This allows organizations to support different runtime environments without duplicating server definitions.

Access and authentication

Registry endpoints assume a Konnect authentication context. Only authenticated clients with appropriate access tokens can query the registry URL:

curl -X GET "https://klabs.us.api.konghq.com/v0/mcp-registries/internal-mcp-registry/v0.1/servers" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KONNECT_TOKEN"

What’s next

We are continuing to evolve MCP Registries alongside the broader MCP ecosystem.

Planned enhancements include:

  • Linking Catalog MCP servers to MCP servers created in AI Gateway 2.0
  • Additional governance and lifecycle controls

Because the MCP specification is still evolving, we are committed to iterating in partnership with customers who have already begun developing MCP servers and experimenting with agent-based workflows.

FAQs

Is the MCP Registry feature GA?

No, MCP Registries in Catalog is only available in Tech Preview via Konnect Labs.

This feature is built on top of Anthropic’s MCP Registry API specification, which is still rapidly evolving. Because the underlying standard continues to change, we cannot responsibly commit to GA timelines or long-term stability guarantees at this time.

We are actively iterating in partnership with customers who are exploring MCP-based agent architectures and will evaluate GA readiness as the specification matures.

Should I create an MCP server or MCP registry in the new Catalog?

If you’re creating a new MCP definition, create an MCP server. It’s the preferred object going forward, and is additive to the MCP registry’s server object. It captures remotes and packages like an MCP registry, but also supports the server’s tools, resources, and prompts. You can also link an MCP server to AI Gateway 2.0 as its source.

If you’re already using MCP registries, we recommend migrating to MCP server so you can use these additional capabilities. You can automate this by writing a script that iterates through each MCP registry and the MCP servers nested under it, then creates a new MCP server using the new object model for each one, including its remotes and packages. You won’t lose any information in the process, since the new object model is additive.

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