Use¶

High-level guidance for how MCP servers are consumed by clients and hosts.

Hosts and Clients¶

• Use supported MCP hosts (desktop, headless, IDEs) appropriate for your environment.
• Prefer gateway-mediated access for centralized authN/Z, routing, quotas, and policy.

Integration Patterns¶

• Direct connection (stdio/http) for local, trusted use cases.
• Through a gateway for enterprise scenarios with many servers/tenants and shared controls.

Authentication¶

• Follow the spec for supported flows; avoid bespoke schemes. Keep tokens scoped, short‑lived, and auditable.

Operational Considerations¶

• Provide clear discovery; document contracts and side effects.
• Publish SLOs and error catalogs; provide support contacts and runbooks.

Good Citizen Guidance¶

• Avoid long‑running client calls without async patterns.
• Respect rate limits and quotas; handle policy denials gracefully.
• Surface provenance and citations where appropriate for auditability.