Enterprise Gateway Patterns – Sheng Liang
Speaker: Sheng Liang, CEO, Obot (formerly Rancher Labs, Cloud.com; ex-SUSE, Citrix; PhD CS Yale; started at Sun on JVM)
Gateway + Registry: Essential Architecture
For enterprises, two pieces of technology are essential:
- MCP Gateway — Control point for what's happening
- MCP Registry — Single source of truth for discovery
"A good third to half of vendors at this conference are providing variations of gateway/registry solutions."
Agent Development Evolution
| Era | Pattern |
|---|---|
| Early | ReAct loops, chat + tools |
| 2024-2025 | Workflow agents (n8n, etc.) |
| Now | Skills + generated code |
"Agents I see today look like skills—some markdown files, and code generated by a code generator."
Architecture Layers
Agent Runtime (Skills, CLI, browser, MCP layer)
Security & Governance (MCP gateway, LLM gateway, supply chain)
Raw MCP Servers
Security Layers Needed
- MCP gateway for access control
- LLM gateway for model visibility (gateway doesn't see everything sent to model)
- Software supply chain filtering (prevent compromised libraries)
- Isolated runtime (enterprise agents shouldn't run on desktops)
Access Control Elevation
"Access control and policy layer is getting elevated out of the application layer, out of the agent layer, and into the gateway layer."
This enables cross-cutting permissions for agents that touch multiple systems.
Skills: The Framework Layer is Collapsing
Skills are emerging as a key primitive — domain-specific knowledge bundles that tell agents how to use MCP tools effectively. Registries are evolving to include skills alongside MCP servers.
"You don't just see MCP registry anymore; you see skills too."
The implication: the traditional agent framework layer (LangChain, CrewAI, etc.) is being absorbed into the MCP layer itself. Skills + generated code are replacing what used to require dedicated SDK and framework code.
Vendor Landscape
| Company | Gateway | Registry | Key Feature |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uber | Yes | Yes | LLM generates tool definitions from 10,000+ service IDLs |
| Obot | Yes | Yes | Skills + supply chain filtering |
| AWS | Yes | Yes | Agent configs + "lethal trifecta" security categorization |
| Duolingo | Yes | Yes | Centralized "MCP store" for discovery |
Key Quotes
"MCP gateway and registry give the admin — or IT in an enterprise — a point of control. Otherwise you really don't know what's happening."
"The agent runtime layer is becoming quite important. It's not just SDK and framework anymore."
"Agents I see today look like skills — some markdown files, and code generated by a code generator."