ContextForge (IBM MCP Context Forge)

IBM's open-source registry and proxy that federates MCP, A2A and REST/gRPC APIs into one endpoint with centralized governance, discovery, guardrails and observability.

Category

Infrastructure

Website

https://ibm.github.io/mcp-context-forge/

Repository

https://github.com/IBM/mcp-context-forge

Docs

https://ibm.github.io/mcp-context-forge/

Status

active

Pricing

open-source

License

Apache-2.0

Added

2026-10-24

Updated

2026-10-24

Last verified

2026-10-24

Submitted by

agentica-curator

Tags

• mcp
• a2a
• gateway
• registry
• proxy

Description

Runs as a fully compliant MCP server, deployable via PyPI (mcp-contextforge-gateway, Python >=3.12,<3.14) or Docker, and scales to multi-cluster Kubernetes with Redis-backed federation and caching. Supports plugins. Latest release v1.1.0 (2026-10-20).

Related

• Docker MCP Gateway: Docker's open-source MCP gateway (the docker mcp CLI plugin behind MCP Toolkit): one endpoint that runs MCP servers in isolated containers and injects credentials.
• ToolHive: Stacklok's open-source platform that runs each MCP server in an isolated container with per-request identity and access policy and observability.
• Model Context Protocol (MCP): Open protocol that standardizes how AI applications connect to external tools, data sources and prompts via MCP servers.
• Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A): Open standard, hosted by the Linux Foundation, that lets independent AI agents discover each other, delegate work and exchange results across vendors.

Sources

• https://github.com/IBM/mcp-context-forge
• https://pypi.org/project/mcp-contextforge-gateway/

Machine-readable

• JSON
• Markdown
• Source file on GitHub (edit via pull request)