Use MCP servers in LM Studio with Toolport
Toolport is a free, open source local MCP gateway. Add your servers to Toolport once, flip the LM Studio toggle, and LM Studio gets all of them through a single gateway entry. Toolport picks a full tool list or search for each client, and you can change it in Clients.
Setup
- Download Toolport for Windows, macOS or Linux, and add your MCP servers to it (or import the ones your other AI agents already have; secrets go to your OS keychain).
- Open the Clients tab and toggle LM Studio on. Toolport writes its gateway entry into LM Studio's config, next to anything already there.
- Restart or reload LM Studio. Your full server set is available through Toolport, and any server you add later shows up without touching LM Studio again.
Where LM Studio keeps its MCP config
All platforms ~/.lmstudio/mcp.json
JSON with a top-level mcpServers object.
Running local models?
Lazy discovery asks the model to search for tools before calling them, and smaller local models often struggle with that multi-step flow. With a capable model it works well; with a smaller one, have Toolport expose the full tool catalog instead, which any model with basic tool calling can use. Either way Toolport, your keys and local-server traffic stay on your machine; remote MCP servers and hosted model APIs still receive the requests you send them.
Why a gateway instead of LM Studio's own server list?
- One setup, every agent. The same servers work in LM Studio and every other AI agent on your machine; add a server once and they all get it.
- Secrets in the OS keychain. API keys are injected at runtime and never sit in LM Studio's config file.
- Watched by default. Rug-pull and tool-poisoning detection on every tool, plus per-tool governance and a destructive-tool kill switch. How the security works.
Free on this machine. Pro puts it on every machine. Team gives it to everyone.