mcp-central-agent

A local agent that bridges private MCP servers (stdio processes, localhost URLs) running on your machine to MCP Central via an outbound tunnel.

Overview

MCP Central is a cloud-hosted MCP proxy, but some MCP servers run locally:

• stdio processes (e.g. npx @modelcontextprotocol/server-github)
• HTTP servers on localhost / 192.168.x.x / *.local

mcp-central-agent solves this by:

1. Running on your machine as a lightweight Node.js process
2. Connecting outbound to MCP Central via Socket.IO (no port forwarding needed)
3. Forwarding tool calls to your local MCP servers and returning results

Quick Start

1. Create a Local Agent in MCP Central

Go to Endpoints → Add Local Agent, enter a name, and copy the generated API key.

2. Initialize Config

npx mcp-central-agent init

Answer the prompts:

• Server URL: https://your-mcp-central.example.com
• Agent name: My Laptop
• API key: agent_xxxxxxxxxx... (from step 1)

This creates mcp-agent.json in the current directory.

3. Start the Agent

npx mcp-central-agent start

The agent connects to MCP Central and receives the list of endpoints assigned to it. It starts each local MCP server and announces its tools to MCP Central.

Configuration File

mcp-agent.json:

{
  "serverUrl": "https://your-mcp-central.example.com",
  "agentName": "My Laptop",
  "apiKey": "agent_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
}

| Field | Description | | ----------- | ------------------------------------------------------ | | serverUrl | Base URL of your MCP Central server | | agentName | Must match the agent name created in the UI | | apiKey | Secret key generated by MCP Central (never share this) |

Endpoints are managed from the MCP Central UI — the agent receives them automatically when it connects.

Supported Transports

| Transport | Description | | ----------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------- | | stdio | Spawns a local process (e.g. npx @modelcontextprotocol/server-fs) | | streamable-http | Connects to a local HTTP MCP server | | sse | Connects to a local SSE MCP server |

CLI Reference

mcp-central-agent init [--output <path>]   Create config file interactively
mcp-central-agent start [--config <path>]  Start the agent

Security

• The API key is a unique secret per agent. Keep it private.
• Traffic is outbound only — no inbound ports needed.
• IP whitelisting is configurable in MCP Central.
• The key is stored as a SHA-256 hash in the database; MCP Central never sees or stores the plain-text key after creation.