Kafka MCP Server

A comprehensive Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for Apache Kafka operations, enabling seamless integration with Claude Desktop and other MCP clients.

🚀 Features

• Cluster Management: Monitor cluster health, broker information, and metadata

• Topic Operations: Create, list, describe, and delete Kafka topics

• Message Operations: Send and consume messages with flexible configuration

• Consumer Group Management: List and describe consumer groups

• Real-time Monitoring: Get topic metrics, offsets, and performance data

• Health Checks: Comprehensive cluster health monitoring

• Secure Configuration: Support for SASL, SSL, and various authentication methods

📋 Prerequisites

• Python 3.8+

• Apache Kafka cluster (local or remote)

• pip package manager

🛠️ Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/aswinayyolath/kafka-mcp-server.git
   cd kafka-mcp-server

2. Create a virtual environment:

   python -m venv venv
   source venv/bin/activate  # On Windows: venv\Scripts\activate

3. Install dependencies:

   pip install mcp kafka-python

4. Configure environment variables:

   cp .env.template .env
   # Edit .env with your Kafka configuration

⚙️ Configuration

Environment Variables

Create a .env file based on .env.template:

# Basic Kafka Configuration
KAFKA_BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS=localhost:9092
KAFKA_SECURITY_PROTOCOL=PLAINTEXT

# SASL Configuration (if needed)
KAFKA_SASL_MECHANISM=PLAIN
KAFKA_SASL_USERNAME=your_username
KAFKA_SASL_PASSWORD=your_password

# SSL Configuration (if needed)
KAFKA_SSL_CAFILE=/path/to/ca.pem
KAFKA_SSL_CERTFILE=/path/to/cert.pem
KAFKA_SSL_KEYFILE=/path/to/key.pem

Docker Setup (Optional)

Start a local Kafka cluster using Docker:

docker-compose up -d

This will start Kafka on localhost:9092.

🧪 Testing

Run the comprehensive test suite to validate your setup:

# Set environment variables
export KAFKA_BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS=localhost:9092
export KAFKA_SECURITY_PROTOCOL=PLAINTEXT

# Run tests
python test_kafka_mcp.py

The test suite validates:

• Kafka connectivity

• MCP server startup

• All available tools

• Topic operations

• Message operations

• Resources and prompts

🔧 Usage

Standalone Server

Run the MCP server directly:

python kafka_mcp_server.py

Claude Desktop Integration

Add to your Claude Desktop configuration (claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "kafka": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["/path/to/kafka_mcp_server.py"],
      "env": {
        "KAFKA_BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS": "localhost:9092",
        "KAFKA_SECURITY_PROTOCOL": "PLAINTEXT"
      }
    }
  }
}

🛠️ Available Tools

Cluster Operations

• get_cluster_info - Get comprehensive cluster information

• health_check - Perform cluster health check

Topic Operations

• list_topics - List all topics in the cluster

• create_topic - Create a new topic

• describe_topic - Get detailed topic information

• delete_topic - Delete a topic

• get_topic_metrics - Get comprehensive topic metrics

• get_topic_offsets - Get partition offsets

Message Operations

• send_message - Send a single message

• send_batch_messages - Send multiple messages

• consume_messages - Consume messages from a topic

Consumer Group Operations

• list_consumer_groups - List all consumer groups

• describe_consumer_group - Get detailed consumer group information

📚 Resources

The server provides MCP resources for easy access to cluster information:

• kafka://cluster/info - Real-time cluster information

• kafka://topics/list - Current topics list

🎯 Prompts

Built-in prompts for common scenarios:

• kafka_monitoring_prompt - Generate monitoring and troubleshooting guidance

• kafka_troubleshooting_prompt - Get help with specific issues

💡 Example Usage with Claude

Once integrated with Claude Desktop, you can ask:

• "Can you check the health of my Kafka cluster?"

• "List all topics and their partition counts"

• "Create a topic called 'user-events' with 3 partitions"

• "Send a test message to the user-events topic"

• "Show me the last 10 messages from user-events"

• "What consumer groups are active?"

🔒 Security

Authentication

The server supports various Kafka authentication methods:

• PLAINTEXT: No authentication (development only)

• SASL_PLAINTEXT: SASL authentication over plain connection

• SASL_SSL: SASL authentication over SSL

• SSL: SSL client certificate authentication

Best Practices

1. Never commit .env files - Use .env.template for examples

2. Use SSL in production - Always encrypt connections to production clusters

3. Limit permissions - Use dedicated service accounts with minimal required permissions

4. Monitor access - Log and monitor MCP server usage

🐛 Troubleshooting

Common Issues

1. Connection refused:

   • Verify Kafka is running

   • Check KAFKA_BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS configuration

   • Ensure network connectivity

2. Authentication failures:

   • Verify SASL credentials

   • Check SSL certificate paths

   • Validate security protocol settings

3. Topic not found:

   • Ensure topic exists

   • Check topic name spelling

   • Verify permissions

Debug Mode

Enable debug logging by setting:

export PYTHONPATH=.
python -c "import logging; logging.basicConfig(level=logging.DEBUG)"
python kafka_mcp_server.py

🤝 Contributing

1. Fork the repository

2. Create a feature branch: git checkout -b feature-name

3. Make your changes

4. Run tests: python test_kafka_mcp.py

5. Commit changes: git commit -am 'Add feature'

6. Push to branch: git push origin feature-name

7. Submit a pull request

📄 License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 - see the LICENSE file for details.

🙏 Acknowledgments

• Model Context Protocol - For the MCP specification

• Apache Kafka - For the distributed streaming platform

• kafka-python - For the Python Kafka client

📞 Support

For issues and questions:

1. Check the troubleshooting section

2. Run the test suite to validate your setup

3. Review Kafka and MCP documentation

4. Open an issue with detailed error information

Happy Kafka streaming with MCP! 🎉