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startup concept

Middlegate

A local gateway where you set the rules for what your MCP servers can do

An MCP proxy an individual installs between their assistant and their servers.

4

similar startups, last 2 years (11 all-time)

yes

8 matching federal grants and programs

Direction supported by government programs and grants

Test it before you build it

$400 · 3 weeks · 30 prospects

Prove for $400 in 3 weeks that MCP power users will put $25 on a card for a $20-a-month local policy proxy before any client ships native gates.

Riskiest assumption · Power users running three or more MCP servers will personally pay $20 a month for approval gates and a signed audit log now, rather than wait for Claude Desktop, Cursor and the other first-class clients to ship native per-server permissions for free

1Focus group: who and where

A senior engineer, staff engineer or technical PM at a mid-size or large company who runs three or more personal MCP servers (email, files, GitHub, Slack) through Claude Desktop or Cursor, inside or around company policy, and knows one unattended write or send could become a security incident with their name on it

where to find 30 · r/mcp and r/ClaudeAI on Reddit, where users post server setups and near-miss stories; GitHub Discussions and issues on the modelcontextprotocol org, plus contributors to the awesome-mcp-servers list as a directory of exactly these users; local AI Tinkerers meetups, which run monthly in most major US cities

2Sell first, build later

A reserved first-cohort license for a single-binary local MCP proxy with three template policies (read-only default, approval on writes and sends, per-server blocklists) and a signed audit log, shipping to the first 50 reservers on November 2, 2026

the ask · $20 per month, personal card, founding rate locked through 2027; $25 refundable reservation up front

a real yes · A real yes is a completed $25 card reservation; upvotes, GitHub stars, 'ship it and I'll subscribe' comments and free waitlist emails do not count

3Small experiments

The first one attacks the riskiest assumption; each ends with a number that says whether to run the next.

  1. 1. Spec post with paid reservation

    $200 · 10 days

    Write the full README for Middlegate before any code exists: the policy file format, the three template policies, the signed log, the single-binary install. Post it to r/mcp and as a Show HN, linking a landing page that shows $20 a month and takes a $25 refundable card reservation for the first 50 binaries. The reservation count is the direct test of the riskiest assumption.

    keep going if · 15 card-backed $25 reservations within 10 days of the two posts

  2. 2. Fifteen incident interviews

    $50 · 7 days

    Book 20-minute calls with reservers and with r/mcp posters who described unwanted tool calls, recruited by DM. Ask each for the specific incident: what the server did, what it touched, and what hand-rolled mitigation they run today, if any. The founder runs all calls in one week.

    keep going if · 9 of 15 describe a specific unwanted write, send or data pull, and at least 6 currently mitigate by hand (disabling servers, reading every diff)

  3. 3. AI Tinkerers live demo

    $150 · 14 days

    Present the policy file format and a mocked approval-gate flow at one local AI Tinkerers meetup, then take reservations in person on a tablet at the same $25. This tests whether the pitch converts strangers outside the Reddit echo chamber.

    keep going if · 5 reservations from one event of 30-60 attendees

4Collect a deposit up front

Tesla took $1,000 refundable reservations for the Model 3 and $100 for the Cybertruck before building either: the deposit is the measurement, not the revenue.

$25

per prospect, refundable

how · A $25 refundable pre-order reservation taken by card on the landing page checkout, the right instrument for a consumer-priced tool bought on a personal card with no procurement in the way; the buyer checks a one-line terms box, nothing is signed set up: Stripe Checkout ↗

what it reserves · One of 50 first-cohort licenses, the $20 a month rate locked through 2027, and the November 2, 2026 ship date

refund · Refunded in full with one click any time before ship day or within 14 days after; otherwise it credits the first month with $5 rolling to the second

target · 20 paid reservations within 21 days across the two posts and one meetup

Go: build it if

20 or more $25 reservations and 9 of 15 interviews naming a real incident: build the binary and ship to the cohort on the promised date

Kill: stop if

Fewer than 8 reservations from 500 or more landing visits, or interviews showing users expect their client to ship native gates and will simply wait: the stated risk is real and the wedge is too thin

5 Scripts to run itoutreach message, landing copy, deposit terms · click to open

outreach message

You're running MCP servers against your real email, files and repos, and you're one unattended tool call away from writing an incident report about yourself. I'm building Middlegate: a single-binary local proxy where you set the rules - read-only by default, human approval on writes and sends, a signed log of every call. $20 a month, first binaries ship November 2. Do you have 20 minutes this week to show me your server setup and where you'd put the gates?

landing page

Your MCP servers, on your rules $25 refundable reservation holds a first-cohort license at $20 a month, locked through 2027 Reserve your binary - first 50 ship November 2, 2026

deposit terms

$25 reserves one of 50 first-cohort licenses at $20 a month, locked through 2027. Fully refundable with one click any time before ship day or within 14 days after; otherwise it credits your first month, with $5 rolling to your second. Binaries ship November 2, 2026.

Would you run this test?

One tap. The yes-share feeds the Demand pillar of this idea's score; nobody sees who answered.

Budgets are out-of-pocket estimates for a team of one to three, US market. Size the deposit to the deal, and check the terms before taking money in a regulated line.

Scorecard

Ranked against every idea in the catalog: trend, demand and 100x potential from the corpus, competition relative to the other ideas. A generated concept has no judges or swipes yet, so its pillars use the data signals only.

70

Idea Score, 0-100 · raw 43.3 x 1.61

Active

competition: more crowded than 57% of ideas · headwind x0.71

+3.7

government priorities, secondary (26 matching grants)

Trend

49

Is the wave forming now? 2025-26 entrants vs 2023-24, rounds since 2025, the sector's live-batch direction, the 2026 trend analyst.

  • Entrants 2025-26 vs 2023-24 (similar companies)98
  • Rounds announced 2025+ in the sector0
  • Sector direction (live batch)50

Demand

61

Does anyone want it? YC's current RFS, companies already paid for something similar, the operator judge, founders' yes-rate in decks, readers who would run the test.

  • YC asks for it (current RFS: idea / sector)30
  • Someone already pays (similar companies, recent / all-time)92

100x potential

57

Can it return a fund? The venture judge (double weight), market-size and moat axes, neighbours still alive, the technologist judge.

  • Neighbours still alive57

Score = 100 x cbrt(Trend x Demand x 100x) x (1 - 0.5 x crowding) + government bonus (max 5), calibrated so the 95th-percentile idea scores 90 (order never changes). A geometric mean: a weak pillar cannot be papered over. Percentiles are among the 382 ideas in the catalog; the terms matched were local, gateway, set, rules, mcp, servers, proxy, individual.

The concept in full

What
An MCP proxy an individual installs between their assistant and their servers. The user writes their own gate rules: read-only by default, human approval on writes and sends, blocklists for specific data leaving specific servers, and a signed log of every tool call for their own audit trail. In the first hour a user routes two MCP servers through it, sets an approval gate on outbound email, and watches the first blocked call appear in the log.
Grounded in (2025-2026 signals)
'On December 9, 2025 Anthropic donated the Model Context Protocol to the new Agentic AI Foundation', with 'MCP had 97 million monthly SDK downloads and 10,000 active servers, with first-class support in ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, Gemini, Copilot and VS Code'. Gartner (June 25, 2025) predicted over 40% of agentic AI projects cancelled by end of 2027, citing weak risk controls.
What it rides
MCP donated to the Agentic AI Foundation. With MCP as neutral infrastructure under the Linux Foundation and 10,000 active servers, the trust question moved from the protocol to the person plugging servers in, and no vendor sets those gates for the individual user.
Why now
MCP hit 97 million monthly SDK downloads and 10,000 active servers as of the December 9, 2025 foundation announcement, while Gartner's June 25, 2025 prediction names weak risk controls as a top reason 40% of agentic projects will die; the individual running personal tools inside company policy needs controls they own, today, at any of the six first-class MCP clients.
Wedge: first customer and entry point
The enterprise power users in MIT NANDA's 40%-plus shadow AI population who want to keep using personal tools without triggering a security incident; entry point is a single-binary proxy with three template policies, paid personally at $20 a month.
Closest real companies, as the generator saw them
Tinfoil (yc X25) offers encrypted AI with verifiable privacy at the infrastructure layer, not user-authored action gates on tool calls. Corsair (yc W25) connects users to their apps; it does not let the user gate what the connection may do.
Main risk
MCP clients add native per-server permission prompts rich enough that a separate policy layer feels redundant.

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Public money in this direction

US federal grants and open opportunities matched to the concept's terms.

Other concepts in this collection

Fictional concept generated 2026-08-26 by claude-fable-5 from the collection's brief and MarkosWeb data. Treat it as a research prompt, not a plan.