What are Context Gateways

What are Gateways?

Context gateways are connections that link Ctxpack to external MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers. Think of them as bridges that allow your AI to communicate with services you already use like GitHub, Slack, databases, or any other system that has an MCP server available.

Before context gateways: You manually build individual API connections and handle authentication, error handling, and data formatting for each service separately.

After context gateways: You connect once to an MCP server and instantly get access to all its pre-built tools, resources, and capabilities that work seamlessly with your AI.

How Gateways Work

Each gateway talks to an MCP server. MCP servers are programs that turn external services into something AI can understand and work with.

Setting up a gateway works like this. You give Ctxpack the connection and authentication details it needs. Ctxpack connects to the MCP server and figures out what it can do. Those capabilities become available for you when you start building your context packs. You can mix and match features from different gateways in your packs.

Gateways vs Tools

This matters. Gateways and tools aren't the same thing.

Gateways are external connections. They sit there and make external tools, resources, and prompts available to Ctxpack. One GitHub gateway might give you tools for creating issues, reading repositories, merging pull requests, and more. Gateways allow you to use their tools and Ctxpack allows you to pick and choose which capabilities you want from these external collections of capabilities.

Tools are individual endpoint calls to external services. You can build tools using directly in the Ctxpack application. You can create context packs using tools from both external gateways as well as add tools built directly in the application.

Common Gateway Examples

CRM Gateway pulls customer data, updates contact records, and tracks deal progress. This gateway (MCP endpoints) could be provided from a platform like Salesforce or HubSpot.

Project Management Gateway handles task assignments, deadline tracking, and team coordination. These kinds of gateways (MCP endpoints) would be published by Asana, Monday.com, or similar platforms.

Marketing Platform Gateway launches campaigns, segments audiences, and measures engagement across email, social media, and advertising channels. Platforms like (Convert)Kit, Drip, or Marketo would expose these gateways.

Business Intelligence Gateway generates executive dashboards, analyzes performance trends, and creates automated reports from your data warehouse or analytics tools.

We Handle the Complex Stuff

The messy parts of managing connections happen behind the scenes. When your AI uses a tool that needs a gateway, we route the request to the right MCP server, handle the authentication and connection details, process what comes back, and keep an eye on performance and errors.

Setting Up Gateways

Most gateway setups need connection details like server URL, port, and protocol information. Authentication with API keys or tokens, or whatever credentials the service requires. Configuration for any specific settings the MCP server wants.

Once you get a gateway configured and working, it stays connected. The MCP server's tools, resources, and prompts become part of what you can use when building.

Gateway Management

Your active gateways show up in the dashboard. You can see connection status and health, check what capabilities each gateway provides, update configuration or credentials, monitor usage and performance, and fix connection problems.

When a gateway goes offline or has issues, any tools that depend on it fail cleanly with clear error messages.

Security and Access

Gateways respect whatever security the MCP servers have. If the server needs specific permissions or has access controls, those apply to anything you build with that gateway.

We don't store your plain sensitive credentials. Authentication tokens and API keys get encrypted and only get used when making requests through the gateway.

Building with Gateways

Once you have gateways set up, building tools gets much easier. Instead of figuring out how to call different APIs or manage various connection types, you just use the capabilities your gateways expose.

This means you focus on what you want your tools to accomplish rather than the technical details of how they connect to external services.