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Get started with Agent Gateway, an open source, highly available, and highly scalable data plane that brings AI connectivity for agents and tools. To learn more about Agent Gateway, see the About section.

About this guide

In this guide, you learn how to use the Agent Gateway to proxy requests to an open source MCP test server that exposes multiple MCP test tools.

You complete the following tasks:

  • Install the Agent Gateway binary on your local machine.
  • Create an Agent Gateway configuration that proxies requests to multiple tools that are exposed on an open source MCP test server, server-everything.
  • Explore the Agent Gateway UI.
  • Test access to the everything_echo MCP tool.

Step 1: Install the binary

  1. Download the Agent Gateway binary and install it.

    curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/agentgateway/agentgateway/refs/heads/main/common/scripts/get-agentproxy | sh

    Example output:

      % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                              Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100  8878  100  8878    0     0  68998      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 69359

Downloading https://github.com/agentgateway/agentgateway/releases/download/v0.4.16/agentgateway-darwin-arm64
Verifying checksum... Done.
Preparing to install agentgateway into /usr/local/bin
Password:
agentgateway installed into /usr/local/bin/agentgateway

  2. Verify that the agentgateway binary is installed.

    agentgateway --version

Step 2: Set up an Agent Gateway

  1. Create a listener and target configuration for your Agent Gateway. In this example, you use a configuration file to configure the Agent Gateway, but you can also use the Agent Gateway UI or admin API to configure these components. For examples, see the Listeners and Targets guides.

    The Agent Gateway in this example is configured as follows:

    • Listener: An SSE listener is configured with the MCP protocol and exposed on port 3000.

    • Target: The Agent Gateway targets a sample, open source MCP test server, server-everything. The server runs the entire MCP stack in a single process and can be used to test, develop, or demo MCP environments.

      To run the server, you use the standard input/output (stdio) capability of the Agent Gateway, which allows you to pass in the command and command arguments that you want to use. In this example, the npx command is used. The npx command utility lets you run a Node.js package (@modelcontextprotocol/server-everything) without installing it. If you do not have npx on your machine, follow the instructions to install Node.js.

    cat <<EOF > config.json
{
     "type": "static",
     "listeners": [
       {
         "name": "sse",
         "protocol": "MCP",
         "sse": {
           "address": "[::]",
           "port": 3000
         }
       }
     ],
     "targets": {
       "mcp": [
         {
           "name": "everything",
           "stdio": {
             "cmd": "npx",
             "args": [
               "@modelcontextprotocol/server-everything"
             ]
           }
         }
       ]
     }
   }
EOF

  2. Run the Agent Gateway.

    agentgateway -f config.json

    Example output:

    2025-04-16T20:19:36.449164Z  INFO agentgateway: Reading config from file: basic.json
2025-04-16T20:19:36.449580Z  INFO insert_target: agentgateway::xds: inserted target: everything
2025-04-16T20:19:36.449595Z  INFO agentgateway::r#static: local config initialized num_mcp_targets=1 num_a2a_targets=0
2025-04-16T20:19:36.449874Z  INFO agentgateway::inbound: serving sse on [::]:3000

Step 3: Explore the UI

The Agent Gateway comes with a built-in UI that you can use to connect to your MCP target to view and access the tools that are exposed on the MCP server. You can also use the UI to review and update your listener and target configuration in-flight. Configuration updates are available immediately and do not require a restart of the Agent Gateway.

  1. Open the built-in Agent Gateway UI.

  2. Go to the Listener overview and review your listener configuration. To learn how to create more or delete existing listeners with the UI, see the Listeners docs.

  3. Go to the Targets overview and review your target configuration. To learn how to create more or delete existing targets with the UI, see the Targets docs.

  4. Connect to the MCP test server with the Agent Gateway UI playground.

    1. Go to the Agent Gateway UI Playground.

    2. In the Connection Settings card, select your Listener Endpoint and click Connect. The Agent Gateway UI connects to the target that you configured and retrieves the tools that are exposed on the target.

    3. Verify that you see a list of Available Tools.

  5. Verify access to a tool.

    1. From the Available Tools list, select the everything_echo tool.

    2. In the message field, enter any string, such as This is my first Agent Gateway setup., and click Run Tool.

    3. Verify that you see your message echoed in the Response card.

Next

With your Agent Gateway up and running, you can now explore the following tasks:

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