ToolHive is a production-grade MCP (Model Context Protocol) server management platform developed by Stacklok. It provides a comprehensive CLI (`thv`), a Kubernetes operator (`thv-operator`), a proxy runner, and a virtual MCP server (vMCP) for aggregating multiple backend MCP servers. The system manages the full lifecycle of MCP workloads—running, stopping, building, exporting, and monitoring—while enforcing authentication (OAuth, OIDC, SPIFFE, AWS STS), authorization (Cedar, HTTP PDP, annotation-based), rate limiting, telemetry (OpenTelemetry/Prometheus), and secrets management (1Password, keychain, environment). It supports multiple transport protocols (SSE, streamable HTTP, stdio) and container runtimes (Docker, Podman, Kubernetes). The architecture is modular: a CLI layer built with Cobra, an API layer (RESTful registry and health endpoints), a Kubernetes operator layer with CRD reconcilers, a transport proxy layer with session management, and a plugin/skill system for installing and verifying OCI artifacts with Sigstore signing. The vMCP subsystem provides tool aggregation, conflict resolution, capability caching, and health monitoring with circuit breakers. External dependencies include Kubernetes client-go, Docker engine, Redis/Valkey, OpenTelemetry SDK, Sigstore, Ory/Fosite (OAuth), and various Go libraries for YAML, JSON Schema, and HTTP networking. Key data flows: CLI commands trigger workload creation via the runner, which builds a RunConfig from user flags and environment, then deploys the MCP server in a container (Docker/Kubernetes). The proxy layer intercepts MCP JSON-RPC messages, applies middleware (auth, rate limiting, telemetry, body limits), and forwards to the backend server. The vMCP server aggregates tools from multiple backends, resolves naming conflicts, and presents a unified MCP interface to clients. Telemetry spans are created at each layer and exported via OTLP. Skills and plugins are installed from OCI registries, verified with Sigstore, and managed via lock files with content digest validation.