Deployments vs. Gateways

Choose between a Deployment and a Gateway to connect an app to Airia.

Deployments and Gateways are the two ways to connect an app to Airia. Both are built from the same three ingredients: the app you want to use, the credentials that connect to it, and the specific tools you want exposed.

What changes between them is scope and where they’re used. A Deployment feeds one app to an agent built inside Airia. A Gateway bundles one or more apps behind a single endpoint that people connect to from an MCP client. Pick based on where the AI that calls the tools actually runs.

The two models

	Deployment	Gateway
What it bundles	A single app	One or more apps behind one endpoint
Scope	A specific project, or all projects in your tenant	A visibility level: Personal or Tenant
Where it’s used	Inside an Airia agent	An MCP client like Cursor, Claude Code, or Claude Desktop
Connection endpoint	None of its own; it attaches to agents as a tool source	One unique endpoint per Gateway
Reuse	Deploy the same app more than once, each with its own enabled tools	Add multiple apps to one Gateway

When to use a Deployment

Use a Deployment when:

• You’re building an agent inside Airia and want to give it one app’s tools.
• You want to scope the connection to a single project, or make it available to every project in your tenant.
• You want the same app connected more than once, for example once per project, each with a different set of enabled tools.

When to use a Gateway

Use a Gateway when:

• The AI that calls the tools runs in an external MCP client like Cursor, Claude Code, or Claude Desktop.
• You want to expose one or more apps through a single, unique endpoint.
• You want to control who sees the connection with a Personal or Tenant visibility level rather than a project.

Any user can create a Personal Gateway. Creating a Tenant Gateway requires the Platform Admin or Security Admin role. See Tenant vs. Personal Level Gateway Configs for how the visibility setting works.

What’s the same either way

Whichever you pick, you connect the same apps with the same credentials and choose the same per-app tools. The build flow is shared: you connect credentials one app at a time, then select which tools to expose. See Gateway/Deployment Creation for the step-by-step flow.

Only apps an admin has approved in Server Management are available to either one.

Related Resources

Gateway/Deployment Creation

Build a Gateway or Deployment step by step

Tenant vs. Personal Gateway Configs

Pick the right visibility level for a Gateway

Server Management

Approve which apps your organization can use

Editing a Gateway

Change apps, credentials, and tools after you create one