The gateway
The free tier blocks calls, but only inside agents that expose a hook point. 6 of the 21 clients do. The other 15 have none, and nothing is checking what they call. The gateway is how you cover them.
The problem it solves
The guard hook is a pre-execution check inside an agent. It is excellent where it can run, and absent where it cannot — Claude Desktop, Kiro, opencode and a dozen others have nowhere to put it. A gateway does not need a hook point: the agent talks to one endpoint, and that endpoint decides.
What you get
| Capability | What it does |
|---|---|
enforce | One endpoint in front of the fleet. Policy on arguments and
responses, not just on tool names, and a hash-chained audit of every allow, block and refusal.
mcpgawk enforce serve · status · rotate
· install · uninstall. |
monitor | Approval is not permanent. Re-checks each approved server on
a schedule and raises drift with the evidence behind it.
mcpgawk monitor run · status · approve. |
build | Generate an MCP server that passes the audit by design. In development. Included at no extra cost when it ships; it is not something you are paying for today. |
A key per agent, which is the part people underestimate
With hooks, a blocked call is attributed to a machine. Through the gateway each agent carries its own key, so a block has a name against it and the log answers "which agent, which tool, which argument, when" rather than "something on this laptop".
The screens
- Panel → Gateway — whether it is running, its endpoint, and which principals have calls attributed to them.
- Panel → Monitor — servers watched live, when each was last checked, and the alerts monitoring raised in its own words.
- Panel → Evidence — archived verify runs, so a verdict can be re-opened later rather than taken on trust.
What it costs, and what stays free
£29 a month per person, all their machines, 7-day trial, cancel any time. Scan, verify, the guard hook, decide and the panel are free forever and are not time-limited or feature-crippled. See Access & billing for how to start.
On the free tier the paid subcommands exit 3 — "cannot run" —
and say why. They never pretend to run and return a clean result.