# What is ContextForge?

> This section introduces what ContextForge is, the gateway patterns it supports, and what core features and capabilities it offers out of the box.

- Skill: `tools-only/what-is-contextforge-2` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 3 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add tools-only/what-is-contextforge-2`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/tools-only/what-is-contextforge-2/raw
- Safety review: pending (external: skill-scanner PASS, skillspector PASS)
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- Author: tools-only (https://skillmd.com/u/tools-only)
- Updated: 2026-09-29
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/tools-only/what-is-contextforge-2

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# Overview

Welcome to ContextForge documentation.

This section introduces what ContextForge is, the gateway patterns it supports, and what core features and capabilities it offers out of the box.

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## What is ContextForge?

**ContextForge** is a production-grade AI gateway, registry, and proxy that sits in front of any MCP, A2A, or REST/gRPC APIs, exposing a unified control plane with centralized governance, discovery, and observability for all your AI needs. It optimizes agent and tool calling, supports plugins, and provides multiple gateway patterns:

- **Tools Gateway** — Federate MCP servers, REST APIs, and gRPC services into one composable tool catalog
- **Agent Gateway** — Route to A2A agents, OpenAI-compatible agents, and Anthropic agents
- **Model Gateway** — LLM proxy with OpenAI API spec, supporting watsonx, OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama, vLLM, and more
- **API Gateway** — Rate limiting, auth, retries, and reverse proxy for REST services
- **Plugin Extensibility** — 40+ plugins for additional transports, protocols, and integrations
- **Observability** — OpenTelemetry tracing with Phoenix, Jaeger, Zipkin, and other OTLP backends

It also provides protocol enforcement, health monitoring, registry centralization, a visual Admin UI, and audit metadata capture — over HTTP, WebSockets, SSE, StreamableHttp, or stdio.

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## What's in This Section

| Page | Description |
|------|-------------|
| [Features](features.md) | Breakdown of supported features including federation, transports, and tool wrapping |
| [Admin UI](ui.md) | Screenshots and explanation of the interactive web dashboard |
| [Quick Start](quick_start.md) | Quick Installation and Start up |