## Summary GitLab users building custom agents and flows have no way to connect their work to the external tools and services they rely on daily, forcing manual workarounds or limiting what their agents can actually do. We are introducing support for external MCP servers in the AI Catalog, allowing DAP-enabled users to connect third-party tools (such as Atlassian, Linear, and others) to their custom agents and flows through a curated, admin-governed catalog. This iteration scopes to admin-controlled MCP server availability with governance controls and baseline observability; self-service submission and user-initiated requests are out of scope. ### Scope * [Beta release](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/work_items/21278) requirements * Governance controls (admin allow/block tool lists, group-level controls on GitLab.com) * Baseline observability (what MCP servers are being invoked, by whom, and how often) * The feature is safe and auditable enough for enterprise adoption