Use MCP servers in Pi with Toolport
Toolport is a free, open source local MCP gateway. Add your servers to Toolport once, flip the Pi toggle, and Pi gets all of them through a single gateway entry, with lazy discovery loading a handful of meta-tools instead of every server's full tool list.
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 Pi on. Toolport writes its gateway entry into Pi's config, next to anything already there.
- Restart or reload Pi. Your full server set is available through Toolport, and any server you add later shows up without touching Pi again.
Where Pi keeps its MCP config
- All platforms
~/.pi/agent/mcp.json
JSON with a top-level mcpServers object.
Good to know
- Toolport leaves Pi's optional lifecycle and idleTimeout keys unset, so the gateway entry uses Pi's own defaults.
Why a gateway instead of Pi's own server list?
- One setup, every agent. The same servers work in Pi and every other AI agent on your machine; add a server once and they all get it.
- Up to 91% fewer tool tokens. Instead of every server dumping its tool list into context, the agent loads a handful of meta-tools and searches on demand (measured).
- Secrets in the OS keychain. API keys are injected at runtime and never sit in Pi'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.