Pattern: Federated Registry
Summary
Teams own and maintain their own MCP servers. A central service discovery layer allows agents to find available servers, but there is no central routing or enforcement gateway.
Diagram
[Discovery Registry]
/ | \
[Team A MCP] [Team B MCP] [Team C MCP]
↑ ↑ ↑
Agent Agent Agent
When to use
- Platform-engineering organizations where teams own their tooling
- When agility and team autonomy matter more than centralized control
- When different teams have different security postures
Trade-offs
| Pro | Con |
|---|---|
| High team autonomy | Inconsistent governance |
| Fast iteration per team | No single audit log |
| No central bottleneck | Discovery complexity grows with scale |