{
  "id": 15179709,
  "title": "Build a Multi-Tenant MCP Server with OAuth Using Clerk and Arcade Cloud",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/17/build-a-multi-tenant-mcp-server-with-oauth-using-clerk-and-arcade",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-10-17T11:14:44.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Dev.to",
    "slug": "dev-to",
    "url": "https://dev.to/aiagentengineering/build-a-multi-tenant-mcp-server-with-oauth-using-clerk-and-arcade-cloud-26ka"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "The article walks through building a multi-tenant MCP server that uses OAuth via Clerk and Arcade Cloud. Zenith, a SaaS dashboard for monitoring share of voice, serves technical products to customers. To let customers use Claude and ChatGPT with their existing Zenith login, a custom MCP server was created and deployed to Arcade Cloud.\n\nThe MCP server exposes operations to agents while the API determines user permissions. By keeping checks in the backend, no additional membership or subscription rules are required in the MCP server. Arcade Cloud hosts the Python MCP server, with the gateway identifying users and Arcade providing the API access token.\n\nA separate web application manages reporting, background jobs, browser sign-in, and custom user verification. Clerk supplies identity and OAuth services, simplifying the OAuth flow for customers. The demo web app runs locally through an ngrok HTTPS tunnel while Arcade Cloud connects to it. This allows the demo to function even if the API and browser verifier run on deployed HTTPS URLs.\n\nRunning the MCP server yourself could be an option, but Arcade handles the gateway authentication and API OAuth integration. Clerk can also act as the authorization server for the MCP server, providing a simpler solution with one credential instead of three. However, this approach requires hosting and operating the server yourself, while Arcade's MCP helper library targets JavaScript frameworks. The gateway offers flexibility for future expansion and can manage multiple MCP servers and prebuilt integrations.",
  "summary": "Our customers kept asking the same question: can we use Zenith with Claude and ChatGPT? Zenith is an AEO service for technical products, and customers use our SaaS dashboard to monitor their share of voice. The dashboard is multi-tenant: every customer workspace has its own data and its own plan, so agent access is a tenant-isolation problem before it’s anything else. So we built a custom MCP…",
  "key_points": [
    "Multi-tenant MCP server built with OAuth via Clerk and Arcade Cloud",
    "Zenith SaaS dashboard integrates Claude and ChatGPT with existing login",
    "Arcade Cloud hosts Python MCP server with identity and API access token"
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}