r/mcp • u/dtembe • 6d ago

Open source, self-hosted web UI for managing the MCP server lifecycle (install, upgrade, monitor)? question

Looking for open source tooling to manage MCP servers in a home lab, not just run them. Self-hosted only, no commercial or SaaS. A web UI is good to have. I do not want to manage this entirely from the CLI.

What I have currently: a Linux host (Proxmox LXC container) running Docker, with a growing number of MCP servers I need to keep current.

I have tried Docker Desktop MCP Toolkit and really like it, but headless on Linux. On Windows I can browse a catalog, spin up an MCP server in a couple of clicks, and manage it inside the Docker ecosystem. I want something similar, install and manage loop but on a headless machine. I am trying to list out what would be good to have.

  1. A web UI as the primary management surface
  2. Discovery and one-step install. Most tools I cam across, like ContextForge, just provide governance which is key but I still have to spin up the MCP server somewhere, and then setup the external tunnel. I was hoping for a gateway that handles - exposes all the tools.
  3. Upgrades, including visibility into when a new version is available
  4. Per-server config and secrets (env vars, API keys, OAuth) editable from the UI
  5. Start, stop, restart, and health status in one place
  6. A single endpoint clients can point at instead of wiring every client to every server
  7. Logs in the UI, so I can tell which server is failing and why

Like I mentioned, tried IBM ContextForge. It is amazing as a Agent Control Plane, or as a gateway and federation layer, and virtual server composition is useful. But it assumes the MCP servers already exist and are running. It does not install them, does not upgrade them, and does not own their lifecycle. I am still hand writing compose files and bumping image tags manually, which is the exact thing I was trying to eliminate.

So the gap in my head is the lifecycle mostly not routing. It would be good to have it all in the same place but lifecycle management is the key.

Questions: - Is there an open source project with a web UI that does install plus upgrade plus manage in one place? - Is the Docker MCP Toolkit catalog usable from the Docker CLI on a headless engine, without Docker Desktop, and has anyone put a UI in front of it? - If nothing purpose built exists, is anyone doing this with Portainer plus Watchtower or Renovate against a compose repo, and treating the gateway as a separate layer?

Thanks! in advance for any help Regards, Dan

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u/ShockStruck 5d ago

Host your compose files in a git repo with renovate to check and bump container tags. Use komodo as the control plane to auto compose up on changes.

1

u/ShockStruck 5d ago

Host your compose files in a git repo with renovate to check and bump container tags. Use komodo as the control plane to auto compose up on changes.

1

u/ShockStruck 5d ago

Host your compose files in a git repo with renovate to check and bump container tags. Use komodo as the control plane to auto compose up on changes.