Using LibreChat to run your own chatbot connected to your MCP's (napsty.com)

LibreChat — an open-source, production-ready chat platform — can be self-hosted to deliver specialized, user-facing chatbots that reach out to your business systems via the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Using Docker (docker compose up -d) and a simple .env with your LLM API keys (OpenAI/Anthropic), Mongo URI and JWT/credential secrets, you can stand up a web-accessible chatbot with OAuth sign-in (Google, GitHub, Auth0) and connect MCP servers in librechat.yaml. The guide shows a typical MCP entry (type: streamable-http, url: https://api.yourbusiness.com/mcp) where headers pass the logged-in user’s ID and Authorization Bearer token so the assistant can act on behalf of users. Create shared Agents in the UI, attach MCP tools, add docs for context, and enable Artifacts to generate editable code, HTML, and Mermaid diagrams for previews and downloads. This is significant because it lets teams deploy tailored assistants quickly (often in under a day) while keeping data and control on-premises or in your cloud. Technical implications include the need to securely manage API keys, JWTs and per-user credentials passed to MCP services, and the flexibility to use any LLM provider. Use cases include customer support bots with access to product catalogs, account management flows, code generation and prototyping — all extensible through custom MCP servers and LibreChat’s agent tooling.