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MCP infrastructure

What a remote MCP
server has to get right.

Most MCP servers start life running on a laptop. Publishing one over the internet changes the engineering problem completely: identity, scope, auditing and revocation become the hard parts, not the tool code.

Two deployment shapes

Same protocol, very different risk.

Local server

Runs on your own machine, launched by the host application, usually over standard input and output. Nothing is exposed to the network, but it only works on the one computer where it's installed.

Remote server

Runs as a service reachable over HTTPS. Any authorised client can connect from any device — which is exactly why authorization, scoping and revocation stop being optional.

Non-negotiables

Six things a public MCP endpoint owes you.

  • HTTPS only

    No plaintext transport, ever. Requests carry authorization material, so the channel has to be encrypted end to end.

  • Real authorization

    The client sends you through a sign-in and a permission screen, then receives a scoped token. It never receives your password, your encryption keys or your token maps.

  • Scoped permissions

    A token grants named scopes — searching memory, reading relevant context, reading preferences — and nothing beyond them. Phase one is read-only.

  • Stateless requests

    Each call authorises and answers on its own, so the service can scale horizontally and a lost connection never leaves state behind.

  • Rate limits

    A remote endpoint is reachable by anything with a token. Limits protect both the service and you from a client that misbehaves in a loop.

  • Instant revocation

    Disconnecting an application invalidates its tokens and blocks the next request. Audit history is kept; access is not.

The Gateway

One server, not one integration per app.

Kelven's MCP Gateway is a single standards-compliant remote server. It is not written for one host: Claude is simply the first client we test against, and adding another compatible client needs no new server. Every request is authorised, filtered by your privacy rules, minimised, tokenised and logged.

Records marked local-only can never be returned through it. That rule has no exception, and Kelven will not quietly upload local memory to make a connection work.

MCP Gateway overview · MCP and privacy

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