Model Context Protocols (MCPs) are quickly becoming the standard for connecting AI agents to external tools, but the developer experience hasn’t caught up. Discovery is fragmented, setup is clunky, and security is too often bolted on last. Fixing this experience isn’t a solo mission—it will take an industry-wide effort. A secure, scalable, and trusted MCP ecosystem demands collaboration across platforms and vendors.

That’s why we’re excited to announce Docker MCP Catalog and Toolkit are now available in Beta. The Docker MCP Catalog, now a part of Docker Hub, is your starting point for discovery, surfacing a curated set of popular, containerized MCP servers to jumpstart agentic AI development. But discovery alone isn’t enough. That’s where the MCP Toolkit comes in. It simplifies installation, manages credentials, enforces access control, and secures the runtime environment. Together, Docker MCP Catalog and MCP Toolkit give developers and teams a complete foundation for working with MCP tools, making them easier to find, safer to use, and ready to scale across projects and teams.

We’re partnering with some of the most trusted names in cloud, developer tooling, and AI, including Stripe, Elastic, Heroku, Pulumi, Grafana Labs, Kong Inc., Neo4j, New Relic, Continue.dev, and many more, to shape a secure ecosystem for MCP tools. With a one-click connection right from Docker Desktop to leading MCP clients like Gordon (Docker AI Agent), Claude, Cursor, VSCode, Windsurf, continue.dev, and Goose, building powerful, intelligent AI agents has never been easier.

This aligns perfectly with our mission. Docker pioneered the container revolution, transforming how developers build and deploy software. Today, over 20 million registered developers rely on Docker to build, share, and run modern applications. Now, we’re bringing that same trusted experience to the next frontier: Agentic AI with MCP tools.

Model Context Protocol is gaining momentum — what improvements are still needed?

As MCPs become the backbone of agentic AI systems, the developer experience still faces key challenges. Here are some of the major hurdles:

Discovering the right, official, and/or trustworthy tools is hard

Finding MCP servers is fragmented. Developers search across registries, community-curated lists, and blog posts—yet it’s still hard to know which ones are official and trustworthy.

Complex installations and distribution

Getting started with MCP tools remains complex. Developers often have to clone repositories, wrangle conflicting dependencies in environments like Node.js or Python, and self-host local services—many of which aren’t containerized, making setup and portability even harder. On top of that, connecting MCP clients adds more friction, with each one requiring custom configuration that slows down onboarding and adoption.

Auth and permissions fall short

Many MCP tools run with full access to the host, launched via npx or uvx, with no isolation or sandboxing. Credentials are commonly passed as plaintext environment variables, exposing sensitive data and increasing the risk of leaks. Moreover, these tools often aren’t designed for scale and security. They’re missing enterprise-ready features like policy enforcement, audit logs, and standardized security. 

How Docker can help solve these challenges

The Docker MCP Catalog and Toolkit are designed to address the above pain points by securely streamlining the discovery, installation, and authentication of MCP servers — making it easy to connect with your favorite MCP clients. 

Discover and run MCP servers easily in secure, isolated containers

The MCP Catalog makes it easy to discover and access 100+ MCP servers — including Stripe, Elastic, Neo4j, and many more — all available on Docker Hub. With the MCP Toolkit Docker Desktop extension, you can quickly and securely run and interact with these servers. By packaging MCP servers as containers, developers can sidestep common challenges such as runtime setup, dependency conflicts, and environment inconsistencies — just run the container, and it works. 

Figure 1: Discover curated and popular MCP servers in Docker MCP Catalog, part of the Docker Hub

We’re not just simplifying discovery and installation — we’re placing security at the heart of the MCP experience. Because MCPs run inside Docker container images, they inherit the same built-in security features developers already trust and a rich ecosystem of tools for securing software throughout the supply chain. And we’re going further. The Docker MCP Toolkit addresses emerging threats unique to MCP servers like Tool Poisoning and Tool Rug Pulls, by leveraging Docker’s strong position as both a provider of secure content and secure runtimes.

Figure 2: The MCP Toolkit Docker Desktop Extension allows you to easily and securely run MCP servers in containers.

Go to the extensions menu of Docker Desktop to get started with Docker MCP Catalog and Toolkit, or use this for installation. Check out our doc for more information.

One-Click MCP Client Integration with Built-In Secure Authentication

While a curated list of MCPs and simplified security is a great starting point, it’s just the beginning. You can connect popular MCP servers from the Docker MCP Catalog to any MCP client. For clients like Gordon (Docker AI Agent), Claude, Cursor, VSCode, Windsurf, continue.dev, and Goose, one-click setup will make integration seamless. 

The Docker MCP Toolkit includes built-in OAuth support and secure credential storage, enabling clients to authenticate with MCP servers and third-party services without hardcoding secrets into environment variables. This ensures your MCP tools run securely and reliably right from the start.

Figure 3: Easily connect to your favorite MCP clients like Gordon, Claude, Cursor, and continue.dev with one click.

Enterprise-Ready MCP Tooling: Build, manage, and share in Docker Hub

Soon, you’ll be able to build and share your own MCPs on Docker Hub—home to over 14 million images, millions of active users, and a robust ecosystem of trusted content. Teams count on Docker Hub for verified images, deep image analysis, lifecycle management, and enterprise-grade tooling. Those same trusted capabilities will soon extend to MCPs, giving teams access to the latest tools and a secure, reliable way to distribute their own. And just like container images, MCPs will integrate with enterprise features like Registry Access Management and Image Access Management, ensuring secure, streamlined developer workflows from end to end. 

Wrapping up

Docker MCP Catalog and Toolkit bring much-needed structure, security, and simplicity to the fast-growing world of MCP tools. By standardizing how MCP servers are discovered, installed, and secured, we’re removing friction for developers building smarter, more capable AI-powered applications and agents.

Whether you’re connecting to external tools, customizing workflows, or scaling automation inside your IDE, Docker makes the entire process easy and secure. And this is just the beginning. With ongoing investments in expanding the MCP ecosystem and streamlining how tools are managed, we’re committed to making powerful AI tooling accessible to every team.

With Docker Catalog and Toolkit, your AI agent isn’t limited by what’s built in — it’s empowered by everything you can plug in. 

Go to the extensions menu of Docker Desktop to get started with Docker MCP Catalog and Toolkit, or use this for installation. See it in action during our upcoming webinar. Interested in hosting your MCP servers on Docker? Let’s connect.

Learn more

• Get started with Docker MCP Catalog and Toolkit
• Join the webinar for a live technical walkthrough.
• Visit our MCP webpage 
• Authenticate and update today to receive your subscription level’s newest Docker Desktop features.
• Subscribe to the Docker Navigator Newsletter.
• New to Docker? Create an account. 
• Have questions? The Docker community is here to help.

For years, Docker has been an essential partner for developers, empowering everyone from small startups to the world’s largest enterprises. Today, AI is transforming organizations across industries, creating opportunities for those who embrace it to gain a competitive edge. Yet, for many teams, the question of where to start and how to effectively integrate AI into daily workflows remains a challenge. True to its developer-first philosophy, Docker is here to bridge that gap.

We’re thrilled to introduce the beta launch of Docker AI Agent (also known as Project: Gordon)—an embedded, context-aware assistant seamlessly integrated into the Docker suite. Available within Docker Desktop and CLI, this innovative agent delivers tailored guidance for tasks like building and running containers, authoring Dockerfiles and Docker-specific troubleshooting—eliminating disruptive context-switching. By addressing challenges precisely when and where developers encounter them, Docker AI Agent ensures a smoother, more productive workflow.

As the AI Agent evolves, enterprise teams will unlock even greater capabilities, including customizable features that streamline collaboration, enhance security, and help developers work smarter. With the Docker AI Agent, we’re making Docker even easier and more effective to use than it has ever been — AI accessible, actionable, and indispensable for developers everywhere.

How Docker’s AI Agent Simplifies Development Challenges  

Developing in today’s fast-paced tech landscape is increasingly complex, with developers having to learn an ever growing number of tools, libraries and technologies.

By integrating a GenAI Agent into Docker’s ecosystem, we aim to provide developers with a powerful assistant that can help them navigate these complexities. 

The Docker AI Agent helps developers accelerate their work, providing real-time assistance, actionable suggestions, and automations that remove many of the manual tasks associated with containerized application development. Delivering the most helpful, expert-level guidance on Docker-related questions and technologies, Gordon serves as a powerful support system for developers, meeting them exactly where they are in their workflow. 

If you’re a developer who favors graphical interfaces, Docker Desktop AI UI will help you navigate container running issues, image size management and more generic Dockerfile oriented questions. If you’re a command line interface user, you can call, and share context with the agent directly in your favorite terminal.

So what can Docker’s AI Agent do today? 

We’re delivering an expert assistant for every Docker-related concept and technology, whether it’s getting started, optimizing an existing Dockerfile or Compose file, or understanding Docker technologies in general. With Docker AI Agent, you also have the ability to delegate actions while maintaining full control and review over the process.

A first example, if you want to run a container from an image, our agent can suggest the most appropriate docker run command tailored to your needs. This eliminates the guesswork or the need to search Docker Hub, saving you time and effort. The result combines a custom prompt, live data from Docker Hub, Docker container expertise and private usage insights, unique to Docker Inc.

We’ve intentionally designed the output to be concise and actionable, avoiding the overwhelming verbosity often associated with AI-generated commands. We also provide sources for most of the AI agent recommendations, pointing directly to our documentation website. Our goal is to continuously refine this experience, ensuring that Docker’s AI Agent always provides the best possible command based on your specific local context.

Beside helping you run containers, the Docker AI Agent can today:

• Explain, Rate and optimize Dockerfile leveraging the latest version of Docker.
• Help you run containers in an effective, concise way, leveraging the local context (checking port already used or volumes).
• Answers any docker related questions with the latest version of our documentations for our whole tool suite, and as such is able to answer any kind of questions on Docker tools and technologies.
• Containerize a software project helping you run your software in containers.
• Helps on Docker related Github Actions.
• Suggest fix when a container is failing to start in Docker Desktop.
• Provides contextual help for containers, images and volumes.
• Can augment its answer with per directory MCP servers (see doc).

For the node expert, in the above screenshot the AI is recommending node 20.12 which is not the latest version but the one the AI found in the package.json.

With every future version of Docker Desktop and thanks to the feedback that you provide, the agent will be able to do so much more in the future.

How can you try Docker AI Agent? 

This first beta release of Docker AI Agent is now progressively available for all signed-in users*. By default, the Docker AI agent is disabled. To enable it you will need to follow the steps below. Here’s how to get started:

1. Install or update to the latest release of Docker Desktop 4.38
2. Enable Docker AI into Docker Desktop Settings -> Features in Development
3. For the best experience, ensure the Docker terminal is enabled by going to Settings → General
4. Apply Changes 

* If you’re a business subscriber, your Administrator needs to enable the Docker AI Agent for the organization first. This can be done through the Settings Management. If this is your case, feel free to contact us through the support  for further information.

Docker Agent’s Vision for 2025

By 2025, we aim to expand the agent’s capabilities with features like customizing your experience with more context from your registry, enhanced GitHub Copilot integrations, and deeper presence across the development tools you already use. With regular updates and your feedback, Docker AI Agent is being built to become an indispensable part of your development process.

For now this beta is the start of an exciting evolution in how we approach developer productivity. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to shape a smarter, more streamlined way to build, secure, and ship applications. We want to hear from you, if you like or want more information you can contact us.

Learn more

• Learn more about Docker’s AI Agent in on our docs