How to Deploy and Use Context Forge: A Step-by-Step Tutorial

Context Forge Tutorial: Deploy & Configure Your AI Gateway

In this tutorial, we'll walk through deploying Context Forge using Docker, configuring it as a centralized MCP gateway, and connecting your first AI agent. By the end, you'll have a fully functional AI Gateway managing your MCP and REST API traffic.

Step 1: Prerequisites

• Docker and Docker Compose installed
• At least 2 CPU cores and 4GB RAM (4 cores / 8GB recommended for production)
• An MCP server endpoint or REST API to route through the gateway

Step 2: Deploy with Docker Compose

Create a docker-compose.yml file:

services:
  context-forge:
    image: gandhipratik203/mcp-context-forge:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    volumes:
      - ./data/context-forge:/data

Run: docker compose up -d

Step 3: Configure Your Gateway

Context Forge exposes a REST API on port 8080. Register your first MCP server:

curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/api/v1/servers \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "my-mcp-server",
    "url": "http://mcp-server:8000",
    "protocol": "mcp"
  }'

Step 4: Connect Your AI Agent

Configure your AI agent to use Context Forge as the single endpoint:

# In your agent config
MCP_GATEWAY_URL=http://localhost:8080
MCP_API_KEY=your-api-key

Step 5: Monitor & Manage

Access the Context Forge dashboard to view metrics, manage servers, and configure rate limits. Use the plugin system to add custom authentication, logging, or request transformations.