[Bug]: Gateway unable to register gateway or call tools on MacOS

[madhav165]

🐞 Bug Summary

Gateway unable to register servers or call tools on MacOS

🧩 Affected Component

Select the area of the project impacted:

• mcpgateway - API
• mcpgateway - UI (admin panel)
• mcpgateway.wrapper - stdio wrapper
• Federation or Transports
• CLI, Makefiles, or shell scripts
• Container setup (Docker/Podman/Compose)
• Other (explain below)

---

🔁 Steps to Reproduce

1. Run gateway with docker (non-ssl) on MacOS

docker run -d --name mcpgateway \
  --network=host \
  -e MCPGATEWAY_UI_ENABLED=true \
  -e MCPGATEWAY_ADMIN_API_ENABLED=true \
  -e JWT_SECRET_KEY=my-test-key \
  -e BASIC_AUTH_USER=admin \
  -e BASIC_AUTH_PASSWORD=changeme \
  -e AUTH_REQUIRED=true \
  -e DATABASE_URL=sqlite:///./mcp.db \
  ghcr.io/ibm/mcp-context-forge:0.4.0

2. Start server

python3 -m mcpgateway.translate   --stdio "docker run --rm -i  -p 8888:8080 -e HOST=0.0.0.0 [ghcr.io/ibm/fast-time-server:latest](http://ghcr.io/ibm/fast-time-server:latest) -transport=stdio"   --port 8003

3. Export token

export MCPGATEWAY_BEARER_TOKEN=$(python3 -m mcpgateway.utils.create_jwt_token \
    --username admin --exp 10080 --secret my-test-key)

4. Register on gateway

curl --request POST \
  --url http://localhost:4444/gateways/ \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $MCPGATEWAY_BEARER_TOKEN" \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
  "name": "fast-time-server",
  "url": "http://localhost:8003/sse"
}'

5. Call tool

curl --request POST \
  --url http://localhost:4444/rpc \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $MCPGATEWAY_BEARER_TOKEN" \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 1,
  "method": "fast-time-server-get-system-time",
  "params": {
    "timezone": "UTC"
  }
}'

---

🤔 Expected Behavior

1. Gateway should register
2. Tool call should happen

---

📓 Logs / Error Output

ERROR [mcpgateway.services.gateway_service] GatewayConnectionError in group: (GatewayConnectionError('Failed to initialize gateway at http://localhost:8003/sse: unhandled errors in a TaskGroup (1 sub-exception)'),)

ERROR [mcpgateway] RPC error: Tool invocation failed: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'auth_value'

---

🧠 Environment Info

You can retrieve most of this from the /version endpoint.

Key	Value
Version or commit	v0.4.0
Runtime	Python 3.12
Platform / OS	macOS
Container	Docker

[madhav165]

Reported by jfliu@ca.ibm.com

[CalebBartleMAA]

I have this same bug too for every single Streamable HTTP server. What is even the specific instructions that Context Forge is recommending here as adding any MCP server to context forge I get this issue.

[vk-playground]

I’m also experiencing this issue on macOS and wanted to share my reproduction steps and logs.

Environment:

• macOS
• Python 3.11 in a virtual environment (pipx installed mcp-contextforge-gateway v0.6.0)
• Gateway running via Docker with --network=host and UI/admin API enabled
• Created a virtual server with ID 6d992805e184436dba2d9da02f982f74 and confirmed I can curl the /tools endpoint on the gateway and see the registered tools

• JWT token generated with python3 -m mcpgateway.utils.create_jwt_token --username admin --exp 10080 --secret my-test-key

Steps to reproduce:

1. Start the gateway (Docker) and the tool servers.
2. Export the token and set the server URL, making sure there is no trailing slash:

export MCP_AUTH=<token>
export MCP_SERVER_URL=http://127.0.0.1:4444/servers/6d992805e184436dba2d9da02f982f74/mcp

3. Run the wrapper:

python3 -m mcpgateway.wrapper

It prints:

2025-08-30 00:39:03,032 INFO mcpgateway.wrapper: Starting MCP stdio wrapper -> http://localhost:4444/servers/6d992805e184436dba2d9da02f982f74/mcp

4. In Claude Desktop, I configured the same environment variables in claude_desktop_config.json below and restarted the app:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcpgateway-wrapper": {
    "command": "python3",
    "args": ["-m", "mcpgateway.wrapper"],
      "env": {
        "MCP_AUTH": "eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJ1c2VybmFtZSI6ImFkbWluIiwiZXhwIjoxNzU3MTM1Mzk1fQ.h17iJpk7R42jjDzo-falrdVbxUM1IM9Ufr_GR9pE0Tw",
        "MCP_SERVER_URL": "http://localhost:4444/servers/6d992805e184436dba2d9da02f982f74/mcp",
        "MCP_TOOL_CALL_TIMEOUT": "120"
      }
    }
  }
}

Within seconds of launching the wrapper, Claude’s logs show the following:

2025-08-30T04:39:26.233Z [info] [mcpgateway-wrapper] Server transport closed unexpectedly, this is likely due to the process exiting early…
2025-08-30T04:39:26.233Z [error] [mcpgateway-wrapper] Server disconnected.
2025-08-30 00:47:24 [warn] UtilityProcess Check: Extension mcpgateway-wrapper not found in installed extensions