What is mcp-remote?

mcp-remote is a small adapter, run via npx, that fills a gap during the transition to remote MCP. Many hosts and config formats were built assuming a local stdio server: you give them a command to launch and they talk to its standard input and output. But a growing number of servers are remote, reached at a URL over Streamable HTTP and gated by OAuth. mcp-remote bridges the two: the host launches mcp-remote as if it were an ordinary local stdio server, and mcp-remote in turn connects out to the remote URL, runs the browser-based OAuth flow, manages the tokens, and proxies messages back and forth. In a client's config it appears as a normal stdio entry whose command is npx mcp-remote followed by the server's URL. This lets you use hosted servers, including OAuth-protected ones, from clients that do not yet have native remote support. As more hosts add first-class remote and OAuth handling, the bridge becomes unnecessary for them, but it remains a reliable fallback for connecting any stdio-only client to a remote server today.