iap-mcp-proxy

A client-side bridge that lets generic MCP clients (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, ...) connect to remote MCP servers protected by Google Cloud Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP).

The GCP counterpart to aws/mcp-proxy-for-aws.

┌──────────────┐        stdio          ┌───────────────┐   HTTPS + ID token   ┌─────┐      ┌────────────┐
│  MCP client  │ ────────────────────► │ iap-mcp-proxy │ ───────────────────► │ IAP │ ───► │ MCP server │
│ (Claude etc.)│                       │  (this tool)  │  Proxy-Authorization │     │      │ (Cloud Run)│
└──────────────┘                       └───────────────┘                      └─────┘      └────────────┘

IAP expects a Google-issued OIDC ID token; the MCP spec's OAuth 2.1 flow can't produce one, so generic clients get a 401/redirect and stop. This proxy runs locally, obtains and refreshes Google credentials, attaches them as Proxy-Authorization (IAP consumes and strips this header), and forwards MCP traffic (Streamable HTTP) upstream.

Install

go install github.com/knwoop/iap-mcp-proxy/cmd/iap-mcp-proxy@latest

or grab a binary from Releases (darwin/linux/windows, amd64/arm64).

Quick start

1. Make sure you have credentials IAP will accept (see Credentials):

   gcloud auth application-default login

2. Add the proxy to your MCP client config. Claude Desktop:

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "internal-tools": {
         "command": "iap-mcp-proxy",
         "args": [
           "--audience", "1234567890-abc.apps.googleusercontent.com",
           "https://mcp.internal.example.com/mcp"
         ]
       }
     }
   }

   Claude Code:

   claude mcp add internal-tools -- iap-mcp-proxy \
     --audience 1234567890-abc.apps.googleusercontent.com \
     https://mcp.internal.example.com/mcp

Usage

iap-mcp-proxy [flags] <UPSTREAM_URL>

Flag	Env var	Default	Description
--audience	IAP_MCP_AUDIENCE	origin of UPSTREAM_URL	OIDC token audience. LB-backed IAP: the IAP OAuth client ID (NNN.apps.googleusercontent.com). Direct Cloud Run IAP: the service URL (the default usually works).
--credentials	IAP_MCP_CREDENTIALS	auto	auto, adc, impersonate, oauth.
--impersonate-service-account	IAP_MCP_IMPERSONATE_SA	—	SA email to impersonate (implies --credentials=impersonate).
--downstream-auth	IAP_MCP_DOWNSTREAM_AUTH	—	Value forwarded as the upstream Authorization header. Supports env:VAR_NAME indirection so secrets stay out of client config files.
--refresh-margin	IAP_MCP_REFRESH_MARGIN	5m	Refresh the ID token this long before expiry.
--timeout	IAP_MCP_TIMEOUT	120s	Upstream timeout: total for JSON responses, idle (time between reads) for SSE streams — so long-running streaming tool calls are not killed while data or keepalives keep arriving.
--log-level	IAP_MCP_LOG	warn	debug / info / warn / error. Logs go to stderr only.
--version	—	—	Print version and exit.

Credentials

With --credentials=auto (the default), sources are tried in this order:

1. Impersonation — if --impersonate-service-account is set, mint ID tokens via the IAM Credentials API (generateIdToken) using your ADC as the base identity. Requires roles/iam.serviceAccountTokenCreator on the target SA. Best for CI and shared team setups.
2. ADC — if Application Default Credentials are a service account key or workload credential, mint an ID token directly.
3. Desktop OAuth — gcloud user credentials can't mint arbitrary-audience ID tokens, so the proxy falls back to an installed-app OAuth flow: first run opens a browser for Google sign-in; the refresh token is stored in your OS keychain (fallback: 0600 file under your user config dir). Requires a desktop OAuth client in the same project as the IAP resource, supplied via IAP_MCP_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID / IAP_MCP_OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET — see Google's docs on programmatic IAP authentication.

The principal must hold roles/iap.httpsResourceAccessor on the IAP resource.

Notes

• The IAP token travels in Proxy-Authorization, which IAP consumes and strips — your app never sees it. If your app has its own auth, pass it with --downstream-auth and it is forwarded verbatim as Authorization.
• On a 401 (or a 302 into Google sign-in) the proxy refreshes the token and retries once; a second failure is surfaced to the MCP client as a JSON-RPC error with an actionable message on stderr.
• If the upstream reports the session expired (HTTP 404 — e.g. after a Cloud Run redeploy), the proxy transparently replays the cached initialize handshake to obtain a fresh session and retries the request; the stdio client never notices.
• If a streaming (SSE) response drops mid-tool-call and the server tags events with IDs, the proxy resumes it with Last-Event-ID instead of losing the response.
• After initialize, the proxy opens the standalone GET SSE stream so server-initiated messages (notifications/tools/list_changed, sampling/elicitation requests, log notifications) reach the client, reconnecting with Last-Event-ID if the stream drops. Servers that respond 405 (no standalone stream) are handled silently.
• Exit codes: 0 clean shutdown, 1 fatal error (bad configuration or unrecoverable runtime failure), 2 auth bootstrap failure.

See docs/setup-gcp.md for setting up IAP in both deployment modes (direct Cloud Run IAP and IAP behind a global external Application Load Balancer).

License

Apache-2.0