open-webui / open-webui/docs

feat: mcpo documentation is dead in the water with no quick prebuilt docker path

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documentation help wanted
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JavaScript
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Description

Check Existing Issues
  • I have searched the existing issues and discussions.
Problem Description

NOTE: THIS IS A DOCUMENTATION COMPLAINT NOT A CODE COMPLAINT

Openwebui is considered far behind in the MCP category due to how it handles MCP. This is often repeated on web forums.

https://docs.openwebui.com/openapi-servers/mcp/

https://github.com/open-webui/mcpo

The MCP documentation is... very slow to figure out a solution that doesn't impact the rest of my dev machine. I don't want to build a docker container locally! If you're making all your users run pip install natively or build a docker container to use MCP, that's a bad strategy.

If I already have a MCP server working with claude code, the user would want to do a minimum to get it working with openwebui

Desired Solution you'd like
  • Update the documentation to have a single docker command/docker compose command which instantly runs the proxy. This also means no impact to the rest of the machine, as the container would be easily removed with a docker compose down command.
    • Note: the docker-compose.yml file would be the configuration file to point to the correct MCP server

This documentation makes setup easy. Make a new folder for the proxy, copy the docker-compose.yml file there and edit it to point to the correct MCP server, run docker compose up, and that's it. The user can see what proxies are running via docker ps.

Alternatives Considered

No response

Additional Context

No response

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the MCP documentation at docs.openwebui.com/openapi-servers/mcp/ and compare its setup guidance with the mcpo repository. Document a single Docker or Docker Compose path, including where users configure their MCP server and how to start and stop it. Done means a user can copy the configuration, point it at an existing server, run docker compose up, and remove it with docker compose down.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
docker, docker-compose
Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
Half a day
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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