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MCP360 Gateway Setup

MCP360 hosts a set of MCP endpoints — search, SEO, WHOIS, DNS, scraping, and more — behind one account API key. Unlike Composio and Smithery, it brokers nothing: there is no per-connection API to call, so an endpoint is reached directly and the key authenticates every caller.

That makes it a gateway. You declare the key once, publish the endpoints you want as catalog entries, and workspace admins install them from Browse like any other connector.

One-time setup

Section titled “One-time setup”

  1. Get an API key.

    Generate one from the MCP360 dashboard. It covers every service on your account.

  2. Declare the gateway in nimblebrain.json.

    {
      "connectors": {
        "gateways": {
          "mcp360": {}
        }
      }
    }

    The name you choose here is what catalog entries reference. Leaving the block empty reads the key from MCP360_API_KEY; set apiKey to declare it inline instead.

  3. Add catalog entries for the endpoints you want to offer.

    Each MCP360 service is its own endpoint, so each is its own entry. Name the gateway in providerAuth.provider.

    servers:
      - name: ai.mcp360/whois
        title: MCP360 — WHOIS
        description: Domain registration, ownership, and availability lookups
        version: "1.0.0"
        remotes:
          - type: streamable-http
            url: https://connect.mcp360.ai/v1/whois/mcp
        _meta:
          ai.nimblebrain/connector:
            auth: provider
            providerAuth:
              provider: mcp360
              config: {}
            tags: [domains, research]

    Catalog entries are deployment configuration. See Connectors Catalog for where the file lives and how to mount it.

  4. Verify the gateway registered.

    Start the platform and look for this line, one per declared gateway:

    [gateway:mcp360] credential provider registered

    The entries now appear in Settings → Connectors → Browse, and installing one connects with no sign-in step.

Configuration reference

Section titled “Configuration reference”
Field Default Notes
apiKey none Falls back to <NAME>_API_KEY, so a gateway named mcp360 reads MCP360_API_KEY. A blank declared value counts as absent and falls through to the environment.

The gateway name is yours to pick, and it must match providerAuth.provider in every entry that uses it. minted, composio, and smithery are reserved by built-in credential providers; declaring one of those logs a warning and skips it rather than displacing the built-in.

Choosing which endpoints to publish

Section titled “Choosing which endpoints to publish”

MCP360 exposes 40+ services. Publish the ones your teams need rather than all of them:

  • Every entry a workspace installs adds its tools to that workspace’s agent, and a large tool surface makes the model’s selection harder.
  • MCP360’s tool descriptions restate the tool name (lookup_domain tool). The input schemas are good, but the descriptions give the model little to choose on, so a curated set works better than a broad one.

What this shape costs you

Section titled “What this shape costs you”

One key serves the whole instance, so MCP360 sees a single caller no matter which workspace made the request. You get no per-workspace attribution, and no way to revoke one workspace’s access without revoking everyone’s. A workspace that exhausts the account’s rate limit exhausts it for all of them.

That is inherent to a gateway rather than a gap in the integration. Where a vendor offers a brokered path as well, prefer it — see Connector Providers.

Adding another gateway

Section titled “Adding another gateway”

A second gateway is configuration, not code. Declare it beside the first and publish its entries:

{
  "connectors": {
    "gateways": {
      "mcp360": {},
      "example-gateway": {}
    }
  }
}

example-gateway then reads EXAMPLE_GATEWAY_API_KEY, and entries naming providerAuth.provider: example-gateway authenticate with it.

Troubleshooting

Section titled “Troubleshooting”

Boot logs no credential provider registered line. No connectors.gateways block is declared. The block is what creates the provider.

Installing succeeds but reports a failed start naming a missing API key. The gateway is declared and no key resolved. The install itself still commits — the connector appears in the workspace and stays disconnected — and the message carries the error, which names both places to set the key. Connect keeps failing until one resolves.

A connector installs and its first tool call returns 401. The key resolved but MCP360 rejected it. Check that it has not been rotated, and that the entry’s url points at a service your plan covers.

Boot warns that a name is reserved. Rename the gateway. A gateway may not take a name a built-in credential provider already holds.

Section titled “Related”