Mirror of https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/registry — A community driven registry service for Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers.
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Filename Latest commit message Latest commit date
Gaurav Gosain 2280e4da38
Add GitHub Container Registry (GHCR) support for MCP servers (#439)
This commit implements support for publishing MCP servers to GitHub
Container
Registry (ghcr.io) in addition to the existing Docker Hub support,
addressing
Docker Hub rate limiting concerns as requested in #393.

Key changes:
- Add RegistryURLGHCR constant for https://ghcr.io
- Refactor OCI validation to support multiple container registries with
extensible RegistryConfig system
- Implement registry-agnostic authentication system that handles:
  - Docker Hub token-based authentication via auth.docker.io
  - GHCR token-based authentication via ghcr.io/token service
- Update Accept headers to support OCI image indexes for multi-arch
images
- Extract helper functions to reduce cyclomatic complexity and improve
code maintainability
- Add comprehensive test coverage for both Docker Hub and GHCR scenarios
- Include real image testing with github/github-mcp-server and
nkapila6/mcp-local-rag
- Update publishing documentation with GHCR examples and authentication
details

The implementation maintains backward compatibility with existing Docker
Hub
usage while providing a future-proof architecture for adding additional
container registries. All authentication is now handled through proper
token
services for both registries.

Fixes #393

## Motivation and Context
Docker Hub rate limiting has been causing issues for the MCP registry
when validating OCI images. Adding GHCR support provides an alternative
container registry that many MCP server authors are already using,
reducing the load on Docker Hub and providing more options for the
community.

## How Has This Been Tested?
- All existing unit tests continue to pass
- Added comprehensive test coverage for GHCR scenarios including:
  - Non-existent images (proper error handling)
  - Real images without MCP annotations (github/github-mcp-server)  
  - Real images with proper MCP annotations (nkapila6/mcp-local-rag)
  - Registry URL validation for both supported registries
- Tested authentication flow manually using curl commands
- Verified multi-arch image support with OCI index manifests

## Breaking Changes
None. This is a purely additive change that maintains full backward
compatibility with existing Docker Hub configurations.

## Types of changes
- [x] New feature (non-breaking change which adds functionality)
- [x] Documentation update

## Checklist
- [x] I have read the [MCP
Documentation](https://modelcontextprotocol.io)
- [x] My code follows the repository's style guidelines
- [x] New and existing tests pass locally
- [x] I have added appropriate error handling
- [x] I have added or updated documentation as needed

## Additional context
The implementation uses a RegistryConfig struct to abstract
registry-specific details like API endpoints, authentication URLs, and
token services. This design makes it straightforward to add support for
additional container registries in the future (such as AWS ECR, Azure
Container Registry, etc.) by simply adding new cases to the
getRegistryConfig function.

The authentication system properly handles the different token services
used by each registry:
- Docker Hub: auth.docker.io with service=registry.docker.io
- GHCR: ghcr.io/token with service=ghcr.io

Both registries now support the full OCI specification including
multi-arch images via OCI image indexes.
2025-09-17 11:56:52 -07:00
.githooks Add linting documentation and pre-commit hooks (#177) 2025-07-15 09:31:17 -07:00
.github build(deps): bump anchore/sbom-action from 0.20.5 to 0.20.6 in the actions group (#489) 2025-09-16 23:59:34 +03:00
.vscode Move publisher CLI from tools/ to cmd/ (#326) 2025-08-29 14:45:36 +01:00
cmd Output new ServerID after publishing (#359) 2025-09-10 06:42:55 -07:00
data fix: Remove servers with invalid package entries (#434) 2025-09-11 07:57:11 +00:00
deploy Move releases.md and update the deployment image reference from latest to main (#369) 2025-09-08 11:40:09 -07:00
docs Add GitHub Container Registry (GHCR) support for MCP servers (#439) 2025-09-17 11:56:52 -07:00
internal Add GitHub Container Registry (GHCR) support for MCP servers (#439) 2025-09-17 11:56:52 -07:00
pkg Add GitHub Container Registry (GHCR) support for MCP servers (#439) 2025-09-17 11:56:52 -07:00
scripts Clean up schema by simplifying version structure (#379) 2025-09-08 14:32:59 -07:00
tests/integration Clean up schema by simplifying version structure (#379) 2025-09-08 14:32:59 -07:00
tools Improve editor experience for server.json using schema (#441) 2025-09-11 18:29:25 -07:00
.dockerignore fix(docker): ignore local mongo .db during rebuild 2025-05-25 12:41:19 -07:00
.env.example config: remove unused database and logging configuration options (#349) 2025-09-03 16:02:02 +01:00
.gitignore feat(infra): Add Pulumi-based Kubernetes deployment infrastructure (#237) 2025-08-11 19:43:49 +01:00
.golangci.yml Disable ireturn linter rule (#307) 2025-08-26 15:16:43 +01:00
.goreleaser.yaml Split registry and mcp-publisher into seperate release assets (#377) 2025-09-08 14:06:45 -07:00
CLAUDE.md Consolidate documentation and remove redundancy (#222) 2025-08-06 16:05:07 +01:00
docker-compose.yml fix(compose): avoid pulling registry from Docker Hub (#437) 2025-09-12 11:16:21 +03:00
Dockerfile Bump Go to 1.25 (#456) 2025-09-12 10:01:40 +00:00
go.mod build(deps): bump go.opentelemetry.io/otel/exporters/prometheus from 0.59.1 to 0.60.0 (#468) 2025-09-13 23:38:36 +03:00
go.sum build(deps): bump go.opentelemetry.io/otel/exporters/prometheus from 0.59.1 to 0.60.0 (#468) 2025-09-13 23:38:36 +03:00
LICENSE Update LICENSE copyright holder to MCP Contributors (#293) 2025-08-21 09:11:42 -06:00
Makefile Introduce Goreleaser (#366) 2025-09-08 11:03:39 -07:00
README.md Fix blog post announcement link (#397) 2025-09-10 06:40:21 -07:00

MCP Registry

The MCP registry provides MCP clients with a list of MCP servers, like an app store for MCP servers.

📤 Publish my MCP server | ⚡️ Live API docs | 👀 Ecosystem vision | 📖 Full documentation

Development Status

2025-09-08 update: The registry has launched in preview 🎉 (announcement blog post). While the system is now more stable, this is still a preview release and breaking changes or data resets may occur. A general availability (GA) release will follow later. We'd love your feedback in GitHub discussions or in the #registry-dev Discord (joining details here).

Current key maintainers:

Contributing

We use multiple channels for collaboration - see modelcontextprotocol.io/community/communication.

Often (but not always) ideas flow through this pipeline:

  • Discord - Real-time community discussions
  • Discussions - Propose and discuss product/technical requirements
  • Issues - Track well-scoped technical work
  • Pull Requests - Contribute work towards issues

Quick start:

Pre-requisites

  • Docker
  • Go 1.24.x
  • golangci-lint v2.4.0

Running the server

# Start full development environment
make dev-compose

This starts the registry at localhost:8080 with PostgreSQL and seed data. It can be configured with environment variables in docker-compose.yml - see .env.example for a reference.

Alternative: Local setup without Docker

Prerequisites:

  • PostgreSQL running locally
  • Go 1.24.x installed
# Build and run locally
make build
make dev-local

The service runs on localhost:8080 by default. This can be configured with environment variables in .env - see .env.example for a reference.

Alternative: Running a pre-built Docker image

Pre-built Docker images are automatically published to GitHub Container Registry:

# Run latest stable release
docker run -p 8080:8080 ghcr.io/modelcontextprotocol/registry:latest

# Run latest from main branch (continuous deployment)
docker run -p 8080:8080 ghcr.io/modelcontextprotocol/registry:main

# Run specific release version
docker run -p 8080:8080 ghcr.io/modelcontextprotocol/registry:v1.0.0

# Run development build from main branch
docker run -p 8080:8080 ghcr.io/modelcontextprotocol/registry:main-20250906-abc123d

Available tags:

  • Releases: latest, v1.0.0, v1.1.0, etc.
  • Continuous: main (latest main branch build)
  • Development: main-<date>-<sha> (specific commit builds)

Publishing a server

To publish a server, we've built a simple CLI. You can use it with:

# Build the latest CLI
make publisher

# Use it!
./bin/mcp-publisher --help

See the publisher guide for more details.

Other commands

# Run lint, unit tests and integration tests
make check

There are also a few more helpful commands for development. Run make help to learn more, or look in Makefile.

Architecture

Project Structure

├── cmd/                     # Application entry points
│   └── publisher/           # Server publishing tool
├── data/                    # Seed data
├── deploy/                  # Deployment configuration (Pulumi)
├── docs/                    # Documentation
├── internal/                # Private application code
│   ├── api/                 # HTTP handlers and routing
│   ├── auth/                # Authentication (GitHub OAuth, JWT, namespace blocking)
│   ├── config/              # Configuration management
│   ├── database/            # Data persistence (PostgreSQL, in-memory)
│   ├── service/             # Business logic
│   ├── telemetry/           # Metrics and monitoring
│   └── validators/          # Input validation
├── pkg/                     # Public packages
│   ├── api/                 # API types and structures
│   │   └── v0/              # Version 0 API types
│   └── model/               # Data models for server.json
├── scripts/                 # Development and testing scripts
├── tests/                   # Integration tests
└── tools/                   # CLI tools and utilities
    └── validate-*.sh        # Schema validation tools

Authentication

Publishing supports multiple authentication methods:

  • GitHub OAuth - For publishing by logging into GitHub
  • GitHub OIDC - For publishing from GitHub Actions
  • DNS verification - For proving ownership of a domain and its subdomains
  • HTTP verification - For proving ownership of a domain

The registry validates namespace ownership when publishing. E.g. to publish...:

  • io.github.domdomegg/my-cool-mcp you must login to GitHub as domdomegg, or be in a GitHub Action on domdomegg's repos
  • me.adamjones/my-cool-mcp you must prove ownership of adamjones.me via DNS or HTTP challenge

More documentation

See the documentation for more details if your question has not been answered here!