Deploy and auth

A local stdio server needs no deployment. Once a server is shared over HTTP, it needs a process manager, a proxy that does not break streaming, and authentication.

Guides

Deploy an MCP server with Docker and nginx: a container image, an nginx config that keeps progress events streaming, and fixes for 504 and 403 invalid Host header.
OAuth for MCP servers: the 401 challenge, protected resource metadata, Client ID Metadata Documents, and a checklist for your server.

Before you deploy

Use a stateless HTTP mode if your SDK has one (Stateless: true in Go, protocol: STATELESS in Spring AI). Then any instance can answer any request, and you need no sticky sessions.
A reverse proxy does not authenticate anyone. An HTTP MCP server without authentication lets anyone who can reach it call every tool.

MCPDev is community documentation. It is not affiliated with the Model Context Protocol project or with the vendors of the clients it covers.