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What Uber's MCP gateway does
Uber's MCP Gateway is one front door for agents. An agent speaks MCP, and the gateway turns that call into a request to an existing HTTP, gRPC, or TChannel API, or passes it to a native MCP server. The post is from October 2026 and describes Uber's system at that time.
For engineers who already know what MCP is and want the company design, not the protocol from scratch.
The path
- An agent asks for a tool
- The MCP Gateway receives that call
- The gateway calls an existing API, or a native MCP server
- The result comes back to the agent
A crawler finds APIs and registers the tools turned off. The team that owns the service turns a tool on before any agent can use it. Uber said this gateway fronted more than 800 MCP servers and 5,000 tools.
Start here
Read the path below, then open Uber's post and find the rule that a discovered tool stays off until the owning team turns it on.
Recommended resources
Start here · BeginnerModel Context Protocol
Read this first if MCP is still an acronym. The gateway page assumes you know it.
modelcontextprotocol.ioSource · AdvancedDesigning MCP Gateway
Uber's own post. Use it after the diagram, for the registry, the crawler, and the security rules.
www.uber.comBuild · IntermediateMCP servers
Run one reference server so a tool list is a thing you have seen, not only a box in the diagram.
github.com