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Organize servers with groups

This guide explains how to organize your MCP servers into groups and configure which groups your MCP clients can access. Groups help you organize servers by project, environment, or team, and control which tools are available to different clients.

Why use groups?​

Groups let you organize MCP servers and control client access:

  • Project isolation: Keep development and production servers separate
  • Environment management: Organize servers by development stage
  • Client customization: Configure different tool sets for different clients
What's the default behavior?

The default group always exists and cannot be deleted. When you add an MCP server, the default group is preselected in the group field unless you choose a different group.

View and navigate groups​

The MCP Servers page includes a sidebar on the left that lists all your groups. The active group is highlighted.

To view servers in a different group, click on the group name in the sidebar. The MCP Servers page updates to show only the servers in that group.

Create a group​

To create a new group:

  1. Open the MCP Servers page.
  2. Click Add a group in the sidebar.
  3. Enter a unique name for the group.
  4. Click Create.

Group names are case-sensitive. For example, "Development" and "development" are treated as different groups.

note

Group names must be unique. If you try to create a group with a name that already exists, you'll see an error message.

Assign servers to groups​

When you install or configure an MCP server, you assign it to a group. All server types (registry, custom local, and remote) include a Group field in their configuration forms.

Assign a server during installation​

When installing a new MCP server from the registry or adding a custom server:

  1. Fill in the server configuration.
  2. In the Group field, select the group where you want to add the server.
  3. Click Install server.

Copy a server to a different group​

You can copy a server to a different group:

  1. On the MCP Servers page, find the server you want to copy.
  2. Click the menu (︙) on the server card.
  3. Select Copy server to a group.
  4. Choose the destination group.
  5. Click Copy.

This creates a complete copy of the server in the destination group, preserving all configuration including secrets, environment variables, and storage volumes. The original server remains in its current group.

Manage client access per group​

You can control which AI clients have access to servers in each group. This lets you configure different tool sets for different clients or environments.

To manage client access for a group:

  1. Navigate to the group by clicking its name in the sidebar.
  2. Click Manage Clients.
  3. Toggle the switches to enable or disable clients for this group.
  4. Click Save.

When you enable a client for a group, ToolHive registers that client to access all servers in the group. When you disable a client for a group, ToolHive unregisters the client from that group.

tip

You can enable the same client for multiple groups. The client will have access to servers from all groups where it's enabled.

Delete a group​

To delete a group:

  1. Navigate to the group by clicking its name in the sidebar.
  2. Click the group actions menu (⋮) in the header.
  3. Select Delete group.
  4. Confirm the deletion in the dialog.
warning

Deleting a group permanently removes all servers in that group. This action cannot be undone. If you want to preserve the servers, copy them to another group before deleting.

You cannot delete the default group.

Example workflows​

Separate development and production servers​

  1. Create two groups: "development" and "production".
  2. Install your MCP servers, assigning development tools to the "development" group and production tools to the "production" group.
  3. Configure your primary AI client (like GitHub Copilot) to access only the "development" group for day-to-day coding work.
  4. Use a different client or manually configure clients to access the "production" group when needed.

Project-based organization​

  1. Create groups for each project: "webapp-frontend", "webapp-backend", and "mobile-app".
  2. Install project-specific MCP servers in each group (for example, React tools in "webapp-frontend", database tools in "webapp-backend").
  3. Configure different AI clients or workspaces to access the appropriate groups for each project.