gatekeeper

Runestone Gatekeeper — MCP Server

An MCP server that lets any MCP client (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, …) run real tool calls — shell, file writes, HTTP, or any Gatekeeper tool — only through Runestone Gatekeeper. Every call is policy-checked, may require human approval, and is audited. The model never touches your systems directly; Gatekeeper sits in front.

MCP client (LLM)  ──tools/call──▶  gatekeeper-mcp  ──policy-gated──▶  Gatekeeper  ──▶  shell / files / HTTP

Requirements

A running Gatekeeper server (see the repo root). This package is just the MCP front door; it does nothing on its own.

Install / configure

It runs over stdio. Add it to your MCP client config, e.g. Claude Desktop (claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "gatekeeper": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@runestone-labs/gatekeeper-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "GATEKEEPER_URL": "http://127.0.0.1:3847",
        "GATEKEEPER_ROLE": "openclaw"
      }
    }
  }
}

Env	Required	Default	Meaning
GATEKEEPER_ROLE	yes	—	The policy role this server presents to Gatekeeper for every call.
GATEKEEPER_URL	no	http://127.0.0.1:3847	Gatekeeper base URL.
GATEKEEPER_AGENT_NAME	no	mcp-client	Name recorded in audit logs.

Shared approvals for unattended agents

Local Gatekeeper and this MCP integration are free. Need a teammate to handle approvals while your agents run unattended? We're testing Gatekeeper Team at $49/month, for up to five members and five instances. The proposed Cloud service would coordinate a held action, a teammate's approval or denial, and a record of the outcome. Cloud is planned, not publicly available, and no payment is collected during this test. Only actions actually routed through Gatekeeper are covered; installing the MCP server does not cover a client's other tools.

See the proposed workflow and share your team's needs. The form also lets you optionally report a first real routed action or return use on a later day. These are manual self-reports, not verified external activation. Don't send commands or raw audit logs; this test adds no automatic usage reporting to the MCP server.

Tools

Tool	Gatekeeper tool	Use
shell_exec	shell.exec	Run a shell command.
files_write	files.write	Write a file.
http_request	http.request	HTTP GET/POST (egress-policed).
gatekeeper_call	(any)	Generic escape hatch — call any Gatekeeper tool (e.g. memory.query) by name.
gatekeeper_health	—	Check the Gatekeeper server is reachable.

Every gated call returns one of:

• allow → the tool output.
• deny → an error result explaining why (the call did not run).
• approve → an error result saying a human must approve it in Gatekeeper; the call did not run.

Security model

This server is a policy boundary, so it is deliberately strict:

• Identity is pinned server-side. Role comes from GATEKEEPER_ROLE; origin is fixed to model_inferred and taint to mcp_client. The MCP client cannot set or override actor / role / origin / taint / capability tokens via tool arguments — there is no code path from a tool argument to any of those.
• Fail closed. A deny, a pending approval, or any malformed/unexpected Gatekeeper response is surfaced as an error — never as a successful result.
• No endpoint traversal. Generic tool names are validated as strict dotted identifiers; ../, slashes, and the like are rejected before any request.
• No leakage. The Gatekeeper URL and anything resembling a credential are scrubbed from error messages before they reach the client.

These invariants are covered by an adversarial test suite (src/*.test.ts).

Distribution

Published to npm as @runestone-labs/gatekeeper-mcp and listed on the MCP Registry as io.github.runestone-labs/gatekeeper (see server.json). The MCP Registry is in preview.

License

Apache-2.0