Thanks for checking this. Yes, there is a way to support this, but it requires a new feature in mcpgateway.translate.

Current Architecture Gap

┌─────────────────┐    ┌──────────────────┐    ┌─────────────────┐
│ Client Request  │───▶│ mcpgateway       │───▶│ STDIO MCP       │
│ Authorization:  │    │ .translate       │    │ Server          │
│ Bearer <token>  │    │                  │    │ (needs env var) │
└─────────────────┘    └──────────────────┘    └─────────────────┘
                              │
                              ▼
                    ❌ Headers NOT converted
                       to environment variables

Your GitHub Enterprise Use Case

What you want:

• Users pass their GitHub PAT via Authorization header
• mcpgateway.translate extracts the token and sets GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable
• GitHub MCP server gets the user's specific token at runtime

Current limitation:

• mcpgateway.translate only supports static environment variables
• No dynamic header-to-environment variable mapping

Recommended Approach

Step 1: Use the translate bridge

# Expose GitHub MCP via translate (will need new --header-to-env flag)
python3 -m mcpgateway.translate \
  --stdio "uvx mcp-server-github" \
  --port 9000 \
  --header-to-env "Authorization=GITHUB_TOKEN"

Step 2: Register with main gateway

# Register as gateway peer with header passthrough
POST /gateways
{
  "name": "github-mcp",
  "url": "http://localhost:9000",
  "passthrough_headers": ["Authorization"]
}

Step 3: Create virtual server

POST /servers
{
  "name": "github",
  "gateway_id": <gateway_id>
}

Step 4: Use with dynamic tokens

# Each user's request gets their token
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer user1-pat-token" \
     http://gateway:4444/servers/github/sse

Implementation Status

GitHub Issue Created: #964

The issue includes:

• ✅ Detailed implementation plan
• ✅ Security considerations
• ✅ Code change requirements
• ✅ CLI argument design (--header-to-env)

Current Workaround

Until the feature is implemented, you'd need to:

1. Run separate translate instances per user/token
2. Or modify the MCP server to accept tokens via command line arguments instead of environment variables

Next Steps

1. Track the issue: Support dynamic environment variable injection in mcpgateway.translate for STDIO MCP servers #964
2. Consider contributing: The implementation is well-scoped and would benefit the community
3. Test current passthrough: Verify header passthrough works for your other use cases