Authentication

PipMCP deals with three separate kinds of credentials. Keeping them apart is what lets an agent use your API without ever holding your API keys.

Credential	Who uses it	Where it goes	Prefix
Upstream credential	PipMCP	From PipMCP to your API	(yours)
Endpoint access token	AI clients	From the client to your MCP endpoint	pmcp_
Management API token	Your scripts and CI	From your code to the PipMCP API	pmk_

Upstream credentials

Stored on a connection. PipMCP adds them to each upstream request at the last moment. They are envelope-encrypted, never shown again after saving, never logged and never sent to AI models or clients.

Auth type	Fields	How it is sent
None	–	No credentials
API key (header)	Header name (default X-API-Key), API key	X-API-Key: <key>
API key (query)	Parameter name (default api_key), API key	?api_key=<key>
Bearer token	Token	Authorization: Bearer <token>
Basic auth	Username, password	Authorization: Basic …
OAuth 2.0 authorization code	Authorization URL, token URL, scopes, client ID, client secret, extra authorize parameters	Bearer access token, refreshed automatically
OAuth 2.0 client credentials	Token URL, scopes, client ID, client secret, audience	Bearer access token, fetched and renewed automatically
Custom headers	One Name: value per line	Each header as given

When you import a spec, PipMCP maps its security schemes to the matching auth type: apiKey to API key (header or query), http bearer to bearer, http basic to basic, and oauth2 to authorization code (or client credentials when that is the only grant).

OAuth 2.0 connections require a paid plan. The redirect URL to register with your provider is:

https://pipmcp.com/app/oauth/callback

Endpoint access tokens

AI clients authenticate to an MCP endpoint with a bearer token:

Authorization: Bearer pmcp_...

• Created on the endpoint page and shown once. Only a SHA-256 hash is stored.
• Bound to one endpoint; a token for one endpoint is rejected by every other.
• Scopes: tools:list (discover tools) and tools:call (run them). New tokens get both.
• Optional expiry; revocable at any time.

An invalid, expired or revoked token gets HTTP 401 with a WWW-Authenticate header:

WWW-Authenticate: Bearer resource_metadata="https://pipmcp.com/.well-known/oauth-protected-resource/mcp/<workspace>/<endpoint>", scope="tools:list tools:call"

A token without tools:call that tries to call a tool gets HTTP 403 with error="insufficient_scope".

Tokens are the supported way to authorize MCP clients today. OAuth-based authorization for MCP clients is not yet generally available.

Management API tokens

Your own code uses workspace API tokens to call the Management API:

Authorization: Bearer pmk_...

Create them under Settings, API tokens. Each token has explicit scopes:

Scope	Allows
integrations:read / integrations:write	List and read integrations / create, import and publish
tools:read / tools:write	List tools / update tools
connections:read / connections:write	List connections / create and test them
endpoints:read / endpoints:write	List endpoints / create and update them
executions:read	Read execution logs
usage:read	Read usage for the current period

Tokens can expire after 1 to 730 days or never, and can be revoked at any time. Actions taken with a token are attributed to the user who created it in the audit log.

Dashboard accounts

Dashboard users sign in with email and password and can enable two-factor authentication under their account settings. Workspace roles (owner, admin, developer, viewer, billing) control what each member can change.