Thank you for your interest in contributing to the official Docker MCP Registry. This document outlines how to contribute to this project.
- Go v1.24+
- Docker Desktop
- Task
- Make sure that the license of your MCP Server allows people to consume it. (MIT or Apache 2 are great, GPL is not).
- Fork the repository to your own GitHub account and clone it locally.
- Repository includes a
serversfolder where you should add a new folder with aserver.yamlinside. - Repository includes a
cmdfolder with Go code to automate some of the steps. - Open a PR by ensuring the title and its description reflect the content of the PR.
- Ensure that CI passes, if it fails, fix the failures.
- Every pull request requires a review from the Docker team before merging.
- Once approved, all of your commits will be squashed into a single commit with your PR title.
Fork the repository to your own GitHub account and clone it locally.
task wizard
Using the wizard it's the easiest way to create your server.yaml, you first need to provide a valid github repo with a Dockerfile, which the wizard will analyze to populate the server default values (you can overwrite them directly in the wizard if you need to).
The wizard allows you to add environment variables, secrets and volumes.
You can use our command to automate the creation of the files. Let's assume we have a new MCP Server to access my org's database. My server's GitHub repo is located at: https://github.com/myorg/my-orgdb-mcp
You can call the creation tool passing the category (required), and github url. If your server requires any environment variables, pass them at the end with -e KEY=value.
task create -- --category database https://github.com/myorg/my-orgdb-mcp -e API_TOKEN=test
This will build an image using the Dockerfile at the root of the repository, run it while verifying the MCP server is able to list tools, and then create the necessary files. It will create a directory under servers as follows: ./servers/my-orgdb-mcp and inside you will find a server.yaml file with your MCP definition.
name: my-orgdb-mcp
image: mcp/my-orgdb-mcp
type: server
meta:
category: database
tags:
- database
about:
title: My OrgDB MCP (TODO)
description: TODO (only to provide a better description than the upstream project)
icon: https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/182288589?s=200&v=4
source:
project: https://github.com/myorg/my-orgdb-mcp
config:
description: Configure the connection to TODO
secrets:
- name: my-orgdb-mcp.api_token
env: API_TOKEN
example: <API_TOKEN>
Remember that you need to specify all the env vars that you want to use in your server:
task create -- --category database https://github.com/myorg/my-orgdb-mcp -e API_TOKEN=test -e MY_ORG=my-org
If you don't specify all the environment variables, users will not be able to configure them properly in the UI.
Also, it's important to notice that env vars and secrets are handled differently. This is how a config block looks:
config:
description: Configure the connection to AWS
secrets:
- name: tigris.aws_secret_access_key
env: AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
example: YOUR_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY_HERE
env:
- name: AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
example: YOUR_ACCESS_KEY_HERE
value: '{{tigris.aws_access_key_id}}'
- name: AWS_ENDPOINT_URL_S3
example: https://fly.storage.tigris.dev
value: '{{tigris.aws_endpoint_url_s3}}'
parameters:
type: object
properties:
aws_access_key_id:
type: string
required:
- aws_access_key_id
This configuration will provide the following UI:
If you want to provide a specific Docker image built by your organisation instead of having Docker build the image, you can specify it with the --image flag:
task create -- --category database --image myorg/my-mcp https://github.com/myorg/my-orgdb-mcp -e API_TOKEN=test
🔒 If you don't provide a Docker image, we will build the image for you and host it in Docker Hub's mcp namespace, the benefits are: image will include cryptographic signatures, provenance tracking, SBOMs, and automatic security updates. Otherwise, self-built images still benefit from container isolation but won't include the enhanced security features of Docker-built images.
After creating your server file with task create, you will be given instructions for running it locally. In the case of my-orgdb-mcp, we would run the following commands next.
task build -- --tools my-orgdb-mcp # Not needed if providing your own image
task catalog -- my-orgdb-mcp
docker mcp catalog import $PWD/catalogs/my-orgdb-mcp/catalog.yaml
Now, if we go into the MCP Toolkit on Docker Desktop, we'll see our new MCP server there! We can configure and enable it there, and test it against configured clients. Once we're done testing, we can restore it back to the original Docker catalog.
docker mcp catalog reset
If your MCP server needs to be configured before listing tools, you can now provide a tools.json file and the build process will not try to run
the server and list the tools. This is one of the most common issues that block your PR.
This is an example of a tools.json file:
[
{
"name": "tools_name",
"description": "description of what you tool does"
"arguments": [
{
"name": "name_of_the_argument",
"type": "string",
"desc": ""
}
]
},
{
"name": "another_tool",
"description": "description of what another tool"
"arguments": [
{
"name": "name_of_the_argument",
"type": "string",
"desc": ""
}
]
}
]
When this file is found next to your server.yaml, the task build -- --tools your-server-name lists the tools by reading the file instead of
running the server.
Upon approval your entry will be processed and it will be available in 24 hours at:
- MCP catalog
- Docker Desktop's MCP Toolkit
- Docker Hub
mcpnamespace (for MCP servers built by Docker)
This project follows a Code of Conduct. Please review it in CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md.
If you have questions, please create an issue in the repository.
By contributing, you agree that your contributions will be licensed under the MIT License.