stephaneberle9/authful-mcp-proxy

Authful-mcp-proxy is a utility designed to solve a temporary friction point in the early Model Context Protocol (MCP) ecosystem: the lack of native authentication and remote transport support in the Claude Desktop client. With only 1 star and minimal activity over 180+ days, it lacks any significant adoption or community moat. Its functionality—wrapping an MCP server in an OIDC flow and converting transport types—is a standard architectural pattern rather than a novel breakthrough. The defensibility is low because this project acts as a 'shim' for capabilities that frontier labs (specifically Anthropic) are highly likely to build directly into their first-party clients. Once Claude Desktop or IDEs like Cursor support authenticated remote MCP endpoints natively, the need for a standalone proxy disappears. The displacement horizon is short (6 months) as the MCP specification and client implementations are moving rapidly toward enterprise readiness, which necessitates built-in auth.