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name: mcpproxy description: Use when the user mentions "mcpproxy", an MCP router/proxy, fronting many MCP servers behind one endpoint, MCP rate-limit or quarantine, or asks how to cut MCP startup cost when running 15+ servers. Points at smart-mcp-proxy/mcpproxy-go and explains how it fits cue's existing MCP materialization. tags: [meta, mcp, infra] category: meta version: 1.0.0 allowed-tools: Bash

mcpproxy

Go-based MCP proxy / router. Upstream: smart-mcp-proxy/mcpproxy-go.

cue materializes MCPs per profile (resources/mcps/). This user runs ~20 MCPs across profiles. mcpproxy sits in front of N upstream MCPs and exposes a single MCP endpoint to the agent — cuts cold-start cost and gives one place to apply allowlists and rate limits.

When to recommend it

• User reports slow Claude Code startup with many MCPs configured.
• User wants a chokepoint to audit or rate-limit MCP traffic.
• User runs the parallel-agents tier — multiple Claude/Codex sessions all spinning up their own MCP processes — and wants one shared backend.

Install

# Binary install (recommended)
curl -L https://github.com/smart-mcp-proxy/mcpproxy-go/releases/latest/download/mcpproxy-linux-amd64 \
  -o ~/.local/bin/mcpproxy && chmod +x ~/.local/bin/mcpproxy

# Or from source
go install github.com/smart-mcp-proxy/mcpproxy-go/cmd/mcpproxy@latest

Wiring with cue

1. Run mcpproxy with the existing MCP configs as upstreams:

   mcpproxy --config ~/.config/cue/mcpproxy.yaml &
   

2. Point ~/.claude.json at the proxy instead of each upstream MCP directly. Keep the per-profile MCP configs in resources/mcps/ as the source of truth — generate mcpproxy.yaml from them.
3. Test with mcp__<proxied>__<tool> calls. Tool name passthrough is 1:1 — no renaming.

When NOT to recommend it

• Single-MCP setup: just call the MCP directly.
• gbrain or any MCP that holds long-lived stateful connections — proxying adds a hop and can desync the MCP's parent-watcher (the gbrain wrapper uses kill -0 $parent_pid to detect agent exit; the proxy is the parent, not the agent, so the watcher will mis-time shutdown).

Rules

• Never proxy gbrain through mcpproxy without first patching the wrapper to track the agent PID via env, not parent PID.
• Never enable mcpproxy globally without flipping one project first and measuring startup delta. Claim "faster" only with numbers.
• Never store the proxy config in the repo if it contains API tokens — put it under ~/.config/cue/ and add a stub mcpproxy.example.yaml to the repo.