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The MCP Gateway connection type ships with a catalog of publicly hosted MCP servers. Pick one in the connection form and hoop fills in its endpoint, transport and authentication mode. You supply the credential. Three authentication modes exist, and the mode decides what the form asks you for.
This page is about the credential hoop uses to reach the MCP server. It is not the token you put in your MCP client — that one proves who you are to hoop, and is covered in Connecting an MCP Client.Either way the credential is stored on the connection and never reaches the model or its context window. Users authenticate to hoop with their own identity.

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Configure a static-token server

Static-auth providers issue you a long-lived key: a Stripe secret key, a GitHub personal access token, a Datadog API key. Configure one in four steps.
1

Create the connection

Go to Resources → New, choose MCP Gateway, and give the role a name.
2

Pick the server

Select it from the MCP Server dropdown. Hoop fills in the endpoint and transport, then switches the authorization panel to a single token field labelled with the header that provider expects.
3

Paste the token

Paste the key the provider issued you. Choose Secrets Manager as the credential source to have hoop fetch it from AWS Secrets Manager or HashiCorp Vault instead of storing it on the connection.
4

Set a tool policy (optional)

Deny destructive tools, or hold them for review. Tool-level control is why you route MCP through a gateway, so set the policy before you hand the connection out.
The header name must match what the provider documents. Context7 requires CONTEXT7_API_KEY and Google Maps requires X-Goog-Api-Key. Send a token under the wrong name and the server sees an unauthenticated request, then answers with an authorization error that gives you no hint. Hoop uses the documented name when you pick a catalog server. You supply the name for a custom server.

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The catalog

Thirty-two servers, grouped by how they authenticate. Send a static token under the header named in the Header column.
Providers change endpoints and authentication requirements. If a connection that used to work starts failing, check the provider’s own MCP documentation before assuming the connection is misconfigured.

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Custom and self-hosted servers

Choose Custom / self-hosted in the dropdown to configure a server the catalog does not know: an internal MCP server, a provider added since this release, or a local stdio server.

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Remote server with a static credential

Set the transport to Streamable HTTP (or HTTP + SSE for older servers) and enter the endpoint URL. Then add the credential as a header under Headers, using the header name the server documents: Hoop stores each header row on the connection as HEADER_<name> and sends it on every request to the MCP server, preserving the name you typed. Both X-Api-Key and CUSTOM_API_KEY reach the server unchanged.

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Remote server with OAuth

If your server implements the MCP authorization profile (RFC 9728 discovery, RFC 7591 dynamic client registration, PKCE), click Authorize with MCP. Hoop runs the flow as an OAuth client and writes the resulting token into the connection’s Authorization header. If the provider does not support dynamic client registration, supply a pre-registered Client ID and Client Secret. Whitelist this redirect URI with the provider:

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Local stdio server

A stdio server is launched from a command instead of reached at a URL. Two transports do this, and they differ in one thing: which machine runs it. Set the transport to Stdio (local server run by the agent) for a server that should be the same for everyone, or Stdio (server runs on the user’s machine) for one that is only useful next to the person using it.
Secrets the child needs also go in Headers. For a stdio server the agent turns them into environment variables in the child process instead of HTTP headers.
An agent stdio server runs on the agent, not on your laptop. The command must be installed and on the agent’s PATH, and it sees the agent’s filesystem and network. The default agent image ships without Node or Python, so an npx-based server needs an agent host or custom image that provides the runtime.
Client stdio moves only the process. Tool policy, guardrails, masking and audit still run in the agent, so a filesystem or git server can act as the user without escaping inspection. Users reach it through hoop connect — see Connecting an MCP Client.

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Tool policy

Every server above supports the same controls. Tool-level control is why you route MCP through hoop instead of pointing the client at the server. Patterns are comma-separated and accept * as a wildcard, so delete_*, admin_* denies any tool whose name starts with either prefix.