Aggregating MCP Servers with Forwards

This guide explains how Wanaku MCP Forwards work and how to use them to expose tools from upstream MCP servers through a single Wanaku router endpoint.

What You Will Learn

• What MCP Forwards are and why they are useful
• Configuring a forward to an upstream MCP server
• Verifying that forwarded tools appear in the router
• Managing and removing forwards

What You Will Need

• Wanaku CLI installed (download from releases page)
• Wanaku running via wanaku start local (see Getting Started)
• An upstream MCP server to forward to (for this demo we use a public test server)

Step 1: Understanding MCP forwards

A forward tells the Wanaku router to proxy MCP requests to another MCP server. From an AI agent's perspective, the forwarded tools look identical to locally registered tools — the agent connects to Wanaku and sees a unified list of tools, regardless of how many upstream servers there are.

This is useful when you:

• Want to aggregate tools from multiple team-owned MCP servers into a single endpoint
• Need to expose a third-party MCP server to your agents without giving them direct access
• Are migrating from multiple MCP servers to a Wanaku-managed deployment gradually

Step 2: Adding a forward

To add a forward to an upstream MCP server, use wanaku forwards add:

wanaku forwards add \
  --name upstream-weather \
  --service http://weather-mcp-server.example.com:8080 \
  --namespace default

The --name is a human-readable label for this forward. The --service is the address of the upstream MCP server.

Step 3: Verifying the forward

List the current forwards to confirm it was added:

wanaku forwards list

You should see the upstream-weather forward in the output.

Step 4: Checking forwarded tools

When a forward is active, the tools from the upstream server appear alongside locally registered tools:

wanaku tools list

Tools from the upstream MCP server will appear in the list alongside any locally registered tools.

Step 5: Removing a forward

To remove a forward:

wanaku forwards remove --name upstream-weather

After removal, the forwarded tools will no longer appear in wanaku tools list.

When to use forwards

Use Case	Recommendation
Single MCP server with all tools	No forwards needed
Multiple team-owned MCP servers	Add a forward per upstream server
Third-party MCP servers	Use forwards to proxy and control access
Gradual migration from many servers to one	Use forwards during the transition

What's Next?

• 3.01 Wanaku on the Cloud — deploy Wanaku to Kubernetes or OpenShift
• 3.02 Camel Integration Capability — advanced enterprise integrations

If you find a bug, please report it. To get in touch with the community, visit the Wanaku project.