That’s fine for developers who are already used to finding resources and adding them to their toolchains as needed. However, for consumers, even power users, such an approach is a non-starter. They expect Windows to keep track of the tools and services they use and manage them. An MCP server for a local agent running in Windows needs to install like any other application, with Windows managing access and security.
Microsoft is adding an MCP registry to Windows, which adds security wrappers and provides discovery tools for use by local agents. An associated proxy manages connectivity for both local and remote servers, with authentication, audit, and authorization. Enterprises will be able to use these tools to control access to MCP, using group policies and default settings to give connectors their own identities.
Registering an MCP server is handled by installing via MSIX packages, with the MCP server using the standard bundle format. Bundles are built using an NPM package, so you need to have NodeJS installed on your development system before downloading and installing the MCP bundle (mcpb) package, and then initializing and building your bundle, targeting your MCP server code. This can then be included in your application’s installer and wrapped as an MSIX file.
