From Local to Cloud: What I Learned Building a Remote MCP Server on AWS for Smart Home Control

I wanted to tell Claude to turn off my bedroom light. Not just from my laptop at home — but from anywhere . What started as " let's try MCP " became " why does OAuth keep failing " and " how do cloud services reach devices behind my router ". This post walks through the architecture decisions and the stuff that tripped me up. Not every choice was obvious, and some things only made sense after I'd already built them wrong once. The full code is here . Why I Built This I recently attended a session organized by the Berlin AWS User Group about Amazon Bedrock AgentCore ( shoutout to the organizers — the session was really helpful!! ). I'd been using MCP for a while but never built one myself. When I looked around, most posts covered the concept and building local MCP servers — not much about deploying remote MCP servers to the cloud or what actually trips you up when you build one. So I picked a concrete use case: control my TAPO smart light bulb via Claude, and build the whole thing on AW