1. Set up & start KubeMQ

Start KubeMQ

Run KubeMQ locally with a single Docker command. This starts the broker with gRPC on port 50000, the shared HTTP server (where the A2A and MCP gateways live) on port 9090, and the dashboard on port 8080.

docker run -d \  --name kubemq \  -p 50000:50000 \  -p 9090:9090 \  -p 8080:8080 \  -e KUBEMQ_TOKEN=YOUR_LICENSE_KEY \  europe-docker.pkg.dev/kubemq/images/kubemq:next

Confirm the dashboard is up at http://localhost:8080, then move on to verify the Aiway endpoints.

Verify the A2A agent roster

The A2A gateway exposes the agent registry at GET /agents. On a fresh server the roster is empty — that is exactly what you want to see before registering an agent in the next step.

curl http://localhost:9090/agents

You should get back an empty roster:

{
  "agents": []
}

An empty list confirms the A2A gateway is live and ready to accept registrations. You'll register research-agent-01 here in Step 2.

Verify the MCP gateway

The MCP gateway answers at POST /mcp. Open a session with a JSON-RPC initialize call — this negotiates the MCP protocol version (2025-11-25) and proves the gateway is reachable.

curl -X POST http://localhost:9090/mcp \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Accept: application/json, text/event-stream" \
  -d '{
    "jsonrpc": "2.0",
    "id": 1,
    "method": "initialize",
    "params": {
      "protocolVersion": "2025-11-25",
      "capabilities": {},
      "clientInfo": { "name": "aiway-tutorial", "version": "1.0.0" }
    }
  }'

A successful handshake returns the server's protocol version and capabilities:

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 1,
  "result": {
    "protocolVersion": "2025-11-25",
    "capabilities": { "tools": {} },
    "serverInfo": { "name": "kubemq-mcp", "version": "1.0.0" }
  }
}