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Note

Model Context Protocol (MCP) is in Private Preview. Contact your Observe representative for more information or open Docs & Support → Contact Support in the product and let us know.

Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard for sharing context between AI models and data systems.

The Observe MCP Server lets agentic tools such as Augment, Cursor, Claude Code, and Claude Desktop connect securely to your Observe tenant so they can investigate incidents, or explore logs, metrics or traces.

What data leaves Observe?

Data sent to OpenAI

Data sent to Claude

OpenAI and Claude don't train their models on your data by default, but we'd like to be transparent about the data that is sent to OpenAI and Claude when you use our MCP server. In addition, all requests use Zero Data Retention (ZDR) for both OpenAI and for Claude — data is processed in-memory by OpenAI and Claude and never stored or logged.

Prerequisites

Verify that the requirements in this section are met before using MCP server.

Required permissions

MCP requires the following minimum RBAC permissions:

You can grant this permission by adding the built-in writer role, or by creating or editing a custom group.

Add the built-in writer role

The writer role already includes Authtokens → Create and other write-level privileges, so assigning it to a user or service account is the quickest path.

Create or edit a custom group

Perform the following steps to create or edit a custom group:

1. Click on your user name in the left navigation rail and select Manage account.
2. Click Groups.
3. Select the Create checkbox for Authtokens. No other permissions are strictly needed for basic MCP usage.
4. Add the users or service accounts that will run the agent/tool to this group.

If your account can’t create Authtokens, ask an Observe administrator to assign the writer role or grant the permission through a custom group.

Install Node.js

The Observe MCP Server requires Node.js v18 or higher.

brew update
brew install node
brew upgrade node
node -v

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Note

If you have multiple versions of Node.js installed, most MCP clients will use the system version that appears first in your PATH. Make sure the system version is 18 or higher.

Configure the Observe MCP server

Perform the following steps to configure the MCP server in Observe:

1. Click on your user name in the left navigation rail and select Manage account.

2. Click MCP Server details.

3. Pick your tool of choice.

   

4. Configure the tool to connect to the Observe MCP Server.

5. Restart your tool.

6. Start asking questions! For example: What are the top 5 errors in my application? Use the Observe MCP Server to answer the question.