# MCP: Gateways, Shadow Servers, and Discovery

> How agents find tools, which MCP servers exist in an environment, and who those tools act for.

- Canonical URL: https://webofmike.com/mcp/
- Author: Mike Moore (https://webofmike.com/about/)
- Published: 2026-10-28
- Last modified: 2026-10-28
- Tags: MCP, AI Gateways, Platform Engineering
- Cite as: Mike Moore, "MCP: Gateways, Shadow Servers, and Discovery", Web of Mike (webofmike.com), 2026-10-28. https://webofmike.com/mcp/


MCP is how agents find and call tools. The hard part is not the protocol. It is knowing which servers exist, what they can do, and who they act for.

These posts define the gap and show the controls that hold. Incident write-ups that started as an MCP failure and turned into a control failure are in [Agent Security](/agent-security/).