Deployment Patterns

mcp-lite is designed to grow with your needs. Start simple and add complexity only when required.

Scaling Strategy

1. Local Prototyping

Run the transport with no adapters. Every request is stateless and there is nothing to clean up.

const transport = new StreamableHttpTransport()

Use when:

• Building and testing locally
• Tools don’t need state between requests
• Quick prototypes and experiments

2. Single Server

Add InMemorySessionAdapter (and optionally InMemoryClientRequestAdapter) so progress notifications and elicitations can span multiple requests from the same client.

const transport = new StreamableHttpTransport({
  sessionAdapter: new InMemorySessionAdapter({
    maxEventBufferSize: 1024
  }),
  clientRequestAdapter: new InMemoryClientRequestAdapter({
    defaultTimeoutMs: 30000
  })
})

Use when:

• Running on a single server instance
• Need sessions but don’t need distributed state
• Development or staging environments

3. Distributed / Serverless

Implement the adapters against shared infrastructure (Redis, SQL, message queues, Durable Objects, etc.).

const transport = new StreamableHttpTransport({
  sessionAdapter: new RedisSessionAdapter(redisClient),
  clientRequestAdapter: new RedisClientRequestAdapter(redisClient)
})

Use when:

• Multiple server instances
• Serverless deployments (Cloudflare Workers, AWS Lambda)
• Need session persistence across instances

Deployment Comparison

Environment	Session Storage	State Storage	Transport Configuration
Development	None	N/A	StreamableHttpTransport()
Single server	In-memory	In-memory	InMemorySessionAdapter
Distributed	Redis/KV	Redis/KV	Custom adapters
Serverless	Durable Objects/KV	Durable Objects/KV	Custom adapters

Example: Cloudflare Workers with KV

For serverless deployments, use persistent storage:

import { McpServer, StreamableHttpTransport } from "mcp-lite"
import { KvSessionAdapter, KvClientRequestAdapter } from "./adapters"

export default {
  async fetch(request: Request, env: Env): Promise<Response> {
    const server = new McpServer({
      name: "worker-server",
      version: "1.0.0"
    })
    // ... define tools

    const transport = new StreamableHttpTransport({
      sessionAdapter: new KvSessionAdapter(env.KV),
      clientRequestAdapter: new KvClientRequestAdapter(env.KV)
    })

    return transport.bind(server)(request)
  }
}

See examples/cloudflare-worker-kv for the complete KV adapter implementation.

Best Practices

Start Stateless

Begin without adapters until you actually need sessions or elicitation.

Add Sessions When Needed

Enable sessions when you need:

• Progress notifications
• SSE streaming
• Event replay for reconnections

Go Distributed Last

Only implement custom adapters when:

• Running multiple instances
• Deploying to serverless platforms
• Need cross-instance session persistence

Monitor and Scale

• Track session count and memory usage
• Set appropriate maxEventBufferSize
• Implement session cleanup/expiry
• Use timeouts for client requests

Next Steps

• Adapters - Implement custom adapters
• Runtime Environments - Deploy to specific platforms
• Examples - See complete implementations