Connecting an MCP Client to MCP Servers on a Neuron

The following list outlines the steps necessary to connect an arbitrary LLM AI Agent with support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to a Neuron®, and allow the agent to use the MCP Servers published by the Neuron. In this interoperation, the LLM Agent will act as an MCP Client, and the Neuron will host multiple MCP Servers, as this specific type of web services are called. These MCP Servers can be integrated with the Neuron itself, or be published by pluggable modules installed on the Neuron. For a list of MCP Servers available in the Neuron itself, see the API section, MCP subsection in the Neuron Documentation.

1. The first step is to register the LLM MCP client with the Neuron. This can be done manually, by creating a User Account, or XMPP Account on the Neuron (both types can be used). This can also be done, as recommended by the Model Context Protocol itself, and its HTTPS binding, by using OAUTH2. If registering the client dynamically using OAUTH2, an XMPP account will be created for the client under the hood. The account will have no privileges by default.

2. Regardless of which route is selected, the user account or XMPP account need to be assigned a corresponding role. An appropriate Role has to be defined first, if none exist. Access to MCP servers is authorized. Each MCP Server lists the privileges different features require in its documentation. MCP and OAUTH2 scopes are translated to required privileges in the Neuron. Each Role defines what privileges it has. And a User or XMPP account having a specific role has by extension the privileges held by any of its roles.

3. Once the LLM Client is registered with the Neuron, and relevant privileges have been assigned, the MCP Client needs to connect to one or more MCP Servers. This is done by configuring the MCP Servers it has access to. The LLM Client then authenticates itself with the Neuron using OAUTH2 (or other available mechanism), and then connects to each MCP Server in turn. For a list of MCP Servers available on the Neuron, see the Neuron Documentation.

4. For troubleshooting, Postman can be used to interact with the MCP Servers on the Neuron as well. Similar steps as mentioned above has to be taken with Postman, with the exception that Postman cannot register itself dynamically. An account has to be created manually on the Neuron first. Postman can then connect using OAUTH2, generating an access token that can then be used to access the different MCP Servers.

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