MCP security, governance & how-tos
Practical guides for anyone connecting AI to real tools — from the team building gate, the MCP gateway.
How to Connect ClickUp to Claude with MCP
ClickUp's remote MCP server puts tasks, docs, and spaces inside Claude — but its OAuth currently only admits allow-listed clients. Here's how to connect it directly or through a gateway, and what to check before an AI client can create or reassign a task.
How to Connect Asana to Claude with MCP
Asana's remote MCP server puts tasks, projects, and portfolios inside Claude — but its OAuth currently only admits allow-listed clients. Here's how to connect it directly or through a gateway, and what to check before an AI client can create or reassign a task.
MCP Tool Annotations Explained: readOnlyHint, destructiveHint, and Why They're Only Hints
MCP tool definitions can carry readOnlyHint, destructiveHint, and two other annotations describing a tool's own risk. Almost no server sets them, and the spec is explicit they're not guarantees. What they are, why gate treats them as one signal among several, and what to set if you're building a server.
How to Connect Todoist to Claude with MCP
Todoist's remote MCP server puts your tasks and projects inside Claude, and its OAuth just works with a new client. Here's how to connect it directly or through a gateway, and what to check before an AI client can create or clear a shared project.
MCP Server Supply Chain Risk: What You're Trusting When You Install One
Running a local MCP server with npx or uvx means executing someone else's code on your machine with your full user permissions, before a single tool call happens. What that risk actually covers, why it's separate from a tool-description scan, and what to check before you run one.
How to Connect PayPal to Claude with MCP
PayPal's remote MCP server puts invoices, orders, and transactions inside Claude, and its OAuth just works with a new client. Here's how to connect it directly or through a gateway, and what to check before an AI client can create an invoice or trace a payment on your behalf.
How to Connect Neon to Claude with MCP
Neon's remote MCP server puts Postgres project management, branching, and querying inside Claude, and its OAuth just works with a new client. Here's how to connect it directly or through a gateway, and what to check before an AI client can run SQL against a real database.
MCP Tool Idempotency: Why Retries Can Silently Duplicate Actions
An AI client retrying a stalled tool call is normal behavior, not a bug — but a write tool that isn't idempotent turns that retry into a duplicate email, ticket, or charge. What idempotency means for MCP tools, why retries happen, and how to design tools that survive being called twice.
What an MCP Security Scanner Actually Checks (and What It Can't)
A scan result reads like a verdict, but it's really three narrow checks on tool text: pattern matching, an LLM review pass, and provenance. What gate's scanner catches, what drift detection adds, and the failure modes no text-based scan can see.
How to Connect DocuSign to Claude with MCP
DocuSign's remote MCP server puts envelope status, signers, and sending inside Claude — but its OAuth currently only admits allow-listed clients. Here's how to connect it directly or through a gateway, and why a tool that can send an envelope deserves more caution than one that only reads.
MCP Apps Explained: What It Means for a Tool Result to Render as UI
MCP Apps, one of the extensions in the July 2026 spec update, lets a server return real interface — forms, pickers, confirmations — instead of text the model has to describe. What it changes, what it doesn't, and why it's early.
How to Revoke an MCP OAuth Grant (And What Revoking Doesn't Always Do)
A grant you approved once can live in three places at once: the vendor's OAuth settings, your AI client's connection list, and a gateway's own record. Where to revoke it, in what order, and how to check it actually worked.
How to Connect Webflow to Claude with MCP
Webflow's remote MCP server puts sites, pages, and CMS content inside Claude, and its OAuth just works with a new client. Here's how to connect it directly or through a gateway, and what to check before an AI client can edit a live site.
How to Connect Cloudflare Docs to Claude with MCP
Cloudflare's documentation MCP server skips OAuth entirely — no account, no sign-in, nothing to authorize. Here's what it does, how to connect it directly or through a gateway, and why 'no sign-in' still deserves a quick check before you trust it.
MCP Sampling Explained: How a Server Can Ask the Client's Model a Question
MCP defines a fourth primitive beyond tools, resources, and prompts: sampling, where a server asks the client's own model for a completion mid-task. What it's for, why the client stays in control, and why almost no server uses it yet.
How to Connect PostHog to Claude with MCP
PostHog's remote MCP server puts your analytics, insights, and feature flags inside Claude — and unlike several others in the catalog, its OAuth just works with a new client. Here's how to connect it directly or through a gateway, and what to check before an AI client reads your product data.
How to Connect Figma to Claude with MCP
Figma's remote MCP server puts design files, frames, and specs inside Claude — but its OAuth currently only admits allow-listed clients. Here's how to connect it directly or through a gateway, and what to check before an AI client can read a design file.
MCP Token Passthrough: The Anti-Pattern the Spec Warns Against
Some MCP servers forward the caller's own access token straight to their backend instead of issuing an audience-scoped one. Why that shortcut is tempting to build, why it quietly breaks OAuth's safety guarantees, and how to tell if a server does it.
How to Connect Vercel to Claude with MCP
Vercel's remote MCP server puts deployments, projects, and logs inside Claude — but its OAuth currently only admits allow-listed clients. Here's how to connect it directly or through a gateway, and what to check before an AI client can read your build logs.
How to Add OAuth to Your Own MCP Server
A remote MCP server needs real OAuth 2.1 — PKCE, dynamic client registration, resource-scoped tokens — not an API key stapled to a header. What a working implementation needs, where builders get stuck, and the shortcut that skips most of it.
How to Connect Zapier to Claude with MCP
Zapier's remote MCP server puts every Zap you've built one prompt away from firing — which means it inherits the reach of every app those Zaps touch. Here's how to connect it directly or through a gateway, and what the wider scope means for what you approve.
MCP Tool Shadowing: When One Server's Description Rewrites How Another Behaves
A tool description on one MCP server can contain text that changes how the model calls a tool on a completely different, fully legitimate server. What tool shadowing is, why per-server review misses it, and what actually limits it.
How to Connect Airtable to Claude with MCP
Airtable's remote MCP server puts your bases, tables, and records inside Claude, and its OAuth just works with a new client. Here's how to connect it directly or through a gateway, and what to check before an AI client can read or edit a shared base.
MCP Tools, Resources, and Prompts: What's the Difference?
Most MCP servers only ever implement tools. The spec also defines resources and prompts — built for the cases tools handle badly. Who controls each one, when to use which, and why builders default to tools anyway.
How to Connect Supabase to Claude with MCP
Supabase's remote MCP server lets Claude query your database, inspect your schema, and manage a project directly. Here's how to connect it directly or through a gateway, and why the project you point it at matters more than usual.
The Confused Deputy Problem in MCP: When Your AI Uses Its Own Access Against You
A confused deputy attack doesn't need a malicious server or a broken OAuth flow — just an agent with real access and one piece of untrusted content. What the classic security problem looks like in MCP tool chains, and what actually limits it.
How Many Tools Should an MCP Server Expose?
MCP doesn't cap tool count, but the model does. Why a long tool list quietly hurts selection accuracy, where the number usually comes from, and how to curate a server down instead of mirroring an entire API.
How to Connect HubSpot to Claude with MCP
HubSpot's remote MCP server puts contacts, deals, and marketing data inside Claude — but its OAuth currently only admits allow-listed clients. Here's how to connect it directly or through a gateway, and what to check before an AI client can read or edit your CRM.
MCP "Unauthorized Client" Error: Why It Happens and How to Fix It
You add an MCP server and OAuth rejects your client with no clear reason. Here's why some vendors allow-list clients instead of open registration, how common it actually is, and three ways to connect anyway.
How to Connect Slack to Claude with MCP
Slack's remote MCP server puts channels, threads, and messages inside Claude — but its OAuth currently only admits allow-listed clients. Here's how to connect it directly or through a gateway, and what that restriction means in practice.
How to Tell a Real MCP Server from a Fake One
Nothing stops anyone from publishing an MCP server called "Notion" or "Slack." Here's what actually verifies a server is what it claims to be — the domain, the vendor's own docs, and the OAuth redirect — before you connect it.
How to Write MCP Tool Descriptions Your AI Will Actually Use Correctly
A tool description is the only spec a model sees before it calls your tool. Here's how to name tools, what to put in the description versus the schema, and how to avoid writing one that doubles as a prompt-injection vector.
How to Connect Stripe to Claude with MCP
Stripe's remote MCP server puts customers, payments, and subscriptions inside Claude. Here's how to connect it directly or through a gateway, and what to check before an AI client can look up — or refund — a real charge.
How to Roll Out MCP to Your Team: A Practical Plan
The fastest way to turn MCP into a security incident is connecting everything on day one and sorting out rules later. A rollout plan that starts with one server, one team, and rules decided in advance instead.
How to Connect monday.com to Claude with MCP
monday.com's remote MCP server puts boards, items, and updates inside Claude. Here's how to connect it directly or through a gateway, and what to check before an AI client can read or edit a shared work board.
What to Look For in an MCP Gateway: A Practical Checklist
Not every product wearing the label 'MCP gateway' does the same job. Five things a real one should do — one URL, per-tool rules, security scanning, centralized OAuth, and a readable log — and how to test a candidate gateway for each.
How to Connect Sentry to Claude with MCP
Sentry's remote MCP server puts issues, releases, and stack traces inside Claude. Here's how to connect it directly or through a gateway, and what to check before an AI client starts reading production error data.
How to Connect Jira and Confluence to Claude with MCP
Atlassian's remote MCP server covers Jira, Confluence, and Bitbucket in one connection. Here's how to connect it to Claude directly or through a gateway, and what a single grant across three products actually means for your access.
We Probed 516 MCP Registry Servers. 94% Are Alive — the Dead-Server Crisis Is Elsewhere
Everyone cites '52% of MCP servers are dead.' We ran real MCP handshakes against 516 remote endpoints from the official registry: 93.8% answer. Both numbers are true — and the difference is where you discover servers, not whether servers rot.
The EU AI Act Reaches Your AI's Action Layer: What MCP Users Need to Log
High-risk obligations become binding August 2, 2026 — and Article 12's automatic logging arguably covers AI tool calls via MCP. What a compliant action-layer log takes, why per-employee configs can't provide one, and the gateway pattern that can.
The OWASP MCP Top 10, Explained for Builders
OWASP now has a dedicated MCP Top 10 of security risks. Here's what all ten (MCP01–MCP10) actually mean in plain terms, grouped by root cause, and honestly which a gateway helps with.
MCP Goes Stateless: What the 2026-07-28 Update Actually Changes
Anthropic just shipped the biggest MCP revision since streamable HTTP: a stateless core, MCP Tasks, MCP Apps, and hardened OAuth. What it means for server builders, users, and gateways — in plain language.
How to Connect GitHub to Claude with MCP
GitHub's remote MCP server doesn't hand out one-click OAuth like most others — here's how to connect it to Claude with a personal access token, directly or through a gateway, and what to scope before you do.
MCP Rug Pulls: When a Server Changes the Tool After You Approved It
A tool you approved can be redefined by its server later, and your AI client won't notice. Here's how MCP rug pulls work, why a one-time review can't catch them, and what drift detection does instead.
What Did Your AI Actually Do? MCP Observability & Audit Logs
When your AI takes real actions, you need a record of them. Here's what an MCP audit log should capture, why you'll need it (debugging, security, EU AI Act), and how to make logs people actually read.
How to Turn Any API Into an MCP Server (From an OpenAPI Spec)
Most apps have an API but no MCP server yet. Here's how to turn a REST API into one — the tools that convert an OpenAPI spec, the tool-count and auth traps, and how to do it safely.
How to Connect Linear to Claude with MCP
Two ways to connect Linear to Claude with the Model Context Protocol — direct or through a gateway — plus what to check before you hand an AI client write access to your issue tracker.
MCP OAuth Scopes Explained: What You're Actually Granting When You Connect a Server
Clicking "Allow" on an MCP OAuth consent screen grants more than most people realize. Here's what OAuth scopes actually control in MCP, where they fall short, and how to close the gap.
Remote vs. Local MCP Servers: Which Should You Use?
Local MCP servers run as a process on your machine over stdio. Remote ones run in the cloud over HTTP with OAuth. Here's the practical difference, and how to pick the right one.
How to Connect Notion to Claude with MCP
Two ways to connect Notion to Claude with the Model Context Protocol — direct or through a gateway — plus what to check before you hand an AI client access to your workspace.
Human-in-the-Loop Approvals for AI Tool Calls: Patterns That Work
Not every AI action should run unsupervised. Here's how human-in-the-loop approvals for tool calls work, which calls to gate, the patterns that scale, and how they quietly fail.
What Is an MCP Gateway? (And When Your Team Needs One)
An MCP gateway is a single control point between your AI clients and every MCP server they use. Here's what it does, the problems it solves, and how to tell when your team needs one.
MCP Prompt Injection and Tool Poisoning: How the Attacks Work (and How to Stop Them)
Prompt injection and tool poisoning are the two attacks that make MCP dangerous. Here's how they work, real 2026 examples, and the layered defenses that actually stop them.
Shadow MCP: The New Shadow IT Hiding in Your AI Stack
Anyone can connect an MCP server in minutes, and most never get security review. Here's what Shadow MCP is, why it's spreading, and how to bring ungoverned AI connections back under control.
MCP Access Control for Teams: RBAC and Least Privilege for AI Tools
Rolling MCP out to a team means deciding who can use which tools. Here's how to apply role-based access control and least privilege to MCP — without shared keys or spreadsheets.
How to Vet an MCP Server Before You Connect It: A Security Checklist
Connecting an MCP server hands it real power over your data and systems. Use this practical checklist to vet any MCP server for prompt injection, permission creep, and credential risks before you connect it.