thv_vmcp_serve.md

title	thv vmcp serve
hide_title	true
description	Reference for ToolHive CLI command `thv vmcp serve`
last_update	author autogenerated
slug	thv_vmcp_serve
mdx	format md

thv vmcp serve

Start the Virtual MCP Server

Synopsis

Start the Virtual MCP Server to aggregate and proxy multiple MCP servers.

The server reads the configuration file specified by --config and starts listening for MCP client connections, aggregating tools, resources, and prompts from all configured backend MCP servers.

When --config is omitted, --group enables zero-config quick mode: a minimal in-memory configuration is generated from the named ToolHive group, so no configuration file is needed for the common case of aggregating a local group.

thv vmcp serve [flags]

Options

  -c, --config string            Path to vMCP configuration file
      --embedding-image string   TEI container image (Tier 2) (default "ghcr.io/huggingface/text-embeddings-inference:cpu-latest")
      --embedding-model string   HuggingFace model name for semantic search (Tier 2) (default "BAAI/bge-small-en-v1.5")
      --enable-audit             Enable audit logging with default configuration
      --group string             ToolHive group name (zero-config quick mode when --config is omitted)
  -h, --help                     help for serve
      --host string              Host address to bind to (default "127.0.0.1")
      --optimizer                Enable FTS5 keyword optimizer (Tier 1): exposes find_tool and call_tool instead of all backend tools
      --optimizer-embedding      Enable managed TEI semantic optimizer (Tier 2); implies --optimizer
      --port int                 Port to listen on (default 4483)
      --session-ttl duration     Session inactivity timeout (e.g., 30m, 2h); zero uses the default (30m)

Options inherited from parent commands

      --debug   Enable debug mode

SEE ALSO

• thv vmcp - Run and manage a Virtual MCP Server locally