Skip to main content

Development Guide

Guide for developers contributing to or extending MCP Gatekeeper.

Getting Started​

MCP Gatekeeper is built as a Turborepo monorepo with Python (FastAPI) backend and React (TypeScript) frontend.

Prerequisites​

  • Node.js 18+ and npm
  • Python 3.9+
  • Git

Setup Development Environment​

# Clone repository
git clone <repository-url>
cd mcp-gatekeeper

# Install dependencies (installs both backend and frontend)
npm install

# Start development servers
npm run dev

This starts:

  • Backend at http://127.0.0.1:8000
  • Frontend at http://localhost:5173
  • Backend hot-reloads on file changes
  • Frontend hot-reloads with Vite HMR

Project Structure​

mcp-gatekeeper/
├── apps/
│   ├── backend/       # FastAPI Python backend
│   ├── frontend/      # React TypeScript frontend
│   └── docs/          # Docusaurus documentation site
├── memory/            # Project documentation and architecture
├── tests/             # Test files
└── turbo.json         # Turborepo configuration

Development Workflow​

  1. Create a branch for your feature/fix
  2. Make changes in relevant workspace
  3. Test locally using dev servers
  4. Update docs in /memory directory for architecture changes
  5. Commit and push your changes
  6. Create PR for review

Available Scripts​

# Development
npm run dev          # Start both backend and frontend in dev mode

# Backend only
cd apps/backend
source venv/bin/activate
uvicorn app.main:app --reload

# Frontend only
cd apps/frontend
npm run dev

# Docs
cd apps/docs
npm start

Key Technologies​

Backend​

  • FastAPI for REST API
  • SQLAlchemy for ORM
  • SQLite for database
  • Pydantic for validation
  • httpx for HTTP client

Frontend​

  • React 19 with TypeScript
  • Material-UI (MUI) v6
  • Vite for build tooling
  • Axios for HTTP requests
  • React Router for navigation

Next Steps​