What is an MCP Registry?

As the MCP ecosystem grew past a handful of hand-picked integrations, the lack of a shared directory became a real friction point: there was no canonical place to find whether an MCP server existed for a given service, or to verify a server's authenticity before connecting to it. A registry addresses this the way a package registry such as npm or PyPI does for code — publishers submit server listings with versioned metadata, and consumers search, install, and pin to specific versions. A registry entry typically includes the server's name, description, the transport it supports, its required authentication mode, and a namespace or publisher identity so consumers can distinguish an official integration from a community fork. Some registries also run basic validation or scanning on submissions to catch obviously malicious or broken servers before they're listed. For host applications, a registry turns adding an integration from a manual, trust-everything install into a searchable, auditable action — closer to how a browser extension store works than to copy-pasting a config file from a forum post.