Gareth MorgansProduct
Private MCP catalog vs public MCP marketplace
Search "MCP marketplace" and you will find directories for browsing servers. That intent is real -- and it is the wrong product for an organisation that needs to know which tools are allowed, who owns them, and how they behave.
A private MCP catalogue answers a different question: what can our people connect, with what docs, under whose ownership?
Start free beta | Private vs public MCP registry
Related: how-to: connect and document an MCP server | AI governance | catalogue vs MCP gateway | AI governance for skills, prompts, and MCPs.
Public browse intent
Public marketplaces and directories help individuals discover MCP servers. They optimise for listing, popularity, and "try this server."
They do not give you:
An org allow-list
Internal documentation of how a tool is meant to be used
Owners and permissions for who can connect or manage
An audit path when something changes
If your team installs from a public list and documents nothing, onboarding and reviews both suffer.
What a private MCP catalog controls
A private MCP catalogue is the inventory your organisation controls:
Connect the servers you actually use
Document tools so people know what each one does -- see document MCP tools
Approve what the team may use
Assign ownership so "who maintains this?" has an answer
Strangers do not browse your internal tool list. Your people stop inventing one-off connections.
Document and approve
Undocumented MCP tools slow every new hire and every incident review. Keep living notes in the catalogue next to the connection -- not in a side wiki that drifts.
Approval turns "someone on the team found this" into "this server is signed off for our work." That is the difference between a marketplace bookmark and a managed catalogue.
Where Joyst sits
Joyst's MCP catalogue is private by design. Contrast with public registries on private vs public MCP registry. Approved servers feed skills and agents. Secrets stay in the secrets vault, referenced rather than pasted into tool configs.
An enterprise MCP gateway may sit further along the roadmap; the catalogue job ships first.
FAQ
Is Joyst an MCP marketplace?
No. Private org catalogue only. No public "download servers" storefront.
Can we still use public MCP servers?
Yes -- after you connect, document, and approve them inside your catalogue. Discovery elsewhere; control here.
How is this different from an MCP gateway?
The catalogue is inventory, docs, ownership, and allow-list. A gateway is traffic and policy at the connection edge. Related jobs; not the same page.