11 Hours of MCP Gateways, Security Scans, and AI Rabbit Holes

mcpsecurityreflection

An honest log of an 11-hour session that was equal parts productive and scattered.

What Got Done

MCP Gateway Setup: ✅ Complete

• Remote MCP gateway with auth tokens working
• Docker MCP integration configured
• DuckDuckGo MCP for Claude Desktop
• Documented config locations and transport types

This is infrastructure that compounds. Every future session benefits.

Security Reconnaissance: ✅ Useful

• SSL/TLS scans on internal infrastructure
• Auth security audit using Kali MCP tools (Nikto, Gobuster, SQLMap, WhatWeb, Nmap)
• Network discovery on home lab subnet (found 4 hosts)
• Generated assessment reports in multiple formats

Hands-on practice beats reading documentation.

Coffee: ✅ Replenished

Critical dependency resolved mid-session.

What Was a Rabbit Hole

AI Writing Tools Research

Deep dive into Obsidian plugins, ShyEditor, Craft, and building Claude artifacts that call the Claude API. Cataloged many options. Shipped nothing.

Sometimes exploration is the point. Sometimes it’s procrastination with extra steps.

The Pattern

High context-switching day: security → MCP → AI tools → infrastructure → back to security.

The MCP gateway completion justified the session. Without that deliverable, this would’ve been a pure exploration day—useful for learning, less useful for momentum.

Takeaway

Not every day needs to be a shipping day, but it helps to have at least one thing you can point to and say “that’s done.”

Today: MCP gateway works. That’s the win.