Elasticsearch 7.x MCP Server

MCP Server for connecting to your Elasticsearch cluster directly from any MCP Client (like Claude Desktop, Cursor).

This server connects agents to your Elasticsearch data using the Model Context Protocol. It allows you to interact with your Elasticsearch indices through natural language conversations.

Feature Overview

Tools come in three sets. Only the first is always exposed; the other two are opt-in through an environment variable, so a production deployment can offer diagnostics without offering deletes. Gating happens at registration: a disabled tool never appears in tools/list, so the model cannot call it and it costs nothing in the agent's context.

Always available — read and write data

Cluster

• elasticsearch_health: cluster health, optionally down to index level

• cluster_info: cluster name, Elasticsearch version and build flavour

Index operations

• list_indices: list indices, filtered by an Elasticsearch wildcard (log-*)

• create_index: create an index with optional settings and mappings

• reindex: copy an index, optionally filtered by a query or transformed by a script

• get_aliases: which aliases point at which indices

Mappings

• get_mappings: the fields of an index, as dotted paths with their types, then the raw mapping

• create_mapping: create or update the mapping of an index

Search and data

• search: run a query DSL search, with highlighting injected over every text field — nested ones included — unless the query brings its own highlight

• count: how many documents match, without transferring any

• get_document: fetch one document by id

• bulk: index many documents at once

Templates

• create_index_template: create or update a composable index template

• get_index_template: read index templates

Tasks

• get_task: progress of a long-running task, such as the one reindex returns

ES_ADMIN_TOOLS=true — diagnostics (read-only)

These only read, so they are safe to enable in production — and are the point of this set: an agent can then explain why an index is unhealthy without anyone logging into the cluster.

• explain_allocation: why a shard is unassigned, with each allocator's decision

• list_shards: shard-level state, leading with the copies that are not STARTED

• list_nodes: heap, CPU, load and disk pressure per node

• get_index_stats: per-index counters — size, segments, indexing, search, merges

• get_index_settings: an index's settings (refresh_interval, replicas, read-only blocks)

• get_cluster_settings: cluster settings that were overridden at runtime

• list_tasks: what the cluster is currently running

ES_ALLOW_DESTRUCTIVE=true — irreversible

Intended for a staging environment, and off by default so production cannot reach them at all.

• delete_index: delete an index and its data

• delete_document: delete one document by id

• delete_by_query: delete every document matching a query — asynchronous, it returns a task id and the deletion continues in the background

• delete_index_template: delete an index template

Even with the flag on, these refuse a wildcard, a comma-separated list, * and _all: they act on one named index at a time. A model that mistakes logs-* for a single index gets a refusal instead of an emptied cluster.

How It Works

1. The MCP Client analyzes your request and determines which Elasticsearch operations are needed.

2. The MCP server carries out these operations (listing indices, fetching mappings, performing searches).

3. The MCP Client processes the results and presents them in a user-friendly format.

Related MCP server: Elasticsearch 7.x MCP Server

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• An Elasticsearch 7.x instance (tested against 7.8; the 7.17 client supports 6.8 through 7.x)

• Elasticsearch credentials — an API key, or a username and password

• An MCP client: Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, Cursor, or anything else that speaks MCP over stdio

Authenticate to GitHub Packages, once

@agrica:registry=https://npm.pkg.github.com
//npm.pkg.github.com/:_authToken=YOUR_GITHUB_TOKEN

Connect it to your client

Every example below sets ES_HOST and ES_API_KEY. Swap in ES_USERNAME/ES_PASSWORD for basic auth, add ES_ADMIN_TOOLS=true to get the diagnostic tools, and set ES_INSTANCE_LABEL when more than one instance is declared — see Configuration Options.

claude mcp add elasticsearch7 \
  --env ES_HOST=https://your-cluster:9200 \
  --env ES_API_KEY=your-api-key \
  --env ES_ADMIN_TOOLS=true \
  -- npx -y @agrica/elasticsearch7-mcp

Then /mcp in a session lists the server and its tools.

Two details that are easy to get wrong:

• Everything after -- is the command that runs the server; without it, Claude Code would try to parse -y as one of its own flags.

• Do not put the server name straight after --env — the CLI reads it as another KEY=value pair and rejects it. Above, the name comes first, which is why it works.

The server is added at local scope, so it loads in the current project only. Add --scope user to get it everywhere, or --scope project to write it into .mcp.json and share it with your team — mind that a committed .mcp.json would carry your API key, so prefer user scope for credentials.

Edit claude_desktop_config.json — Settings > Developer > Edit Config opens it, or find it at %APPDATA%\Claude\ on Windows and ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/ on macOS:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "elasticsearch7": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@agrica/elasticsearch7-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "ES_HOST": "https://your-cluster:9200",
        "ES_API_KEY": "your-api-key",
        "ES_ADMIN_TOOLS": "true"
      }
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop afterwards; it only reads that file at startup.

codex mcp add elasticsearch7 \
  --env ES_HOST=https://your-cluster:9200 \
  --env ES_API_KEY=your-api-key \
  -- npx -y @agrica/elasticsearch7-mcp

Or write it into ~/.codex/config.toml by hand. Note that Codex spells the table mcp_servers with an underscore, and that the environment goes in its own sub-table rather than inline:

[mcp_servers.elasticsearch7]
command = "npx"
args = ["-y", "@agrica/elasticsearch7-mcp"]

[mcp_servers.elasticsearch7.env]
ES_HOST = "https://your-cluster:9200"
ES_API_KEY = "your-api-key"
ES_ADMIN_TOOLS = "true"

/mcp inside Codex confirms the server is loaded.

The server is a plain stdio MCP server, so anything on the MCP client list works. It needs three things: the command npx, the arguments -y @agrica/elasticsearch7-mcp, and the ES_* variables in its environment. It never listens on a port, and writes nothing but MCP protocol to stdout — diagnostics go to stderr.

Configuration Options

The Elasticsearch MCP Server supports configuration options to connect to your Elasticsearch:

Result size

A tool result is capped at 32 KB (ES_MAX_RESULT_BYTES). This matters on a logging cluster: before the cap, one list_shards call over a year of daily indices returned 385 KB — around 96 000 tokens — in a single answer, which is more than most sessions can hold.

When a result is trimmed it says so, says how much went, and says how to ask a smaller question. Three tools shape their answers around it:

• list_indices and list_shards return a readable summary; the same rows as text are behind verbose.

• search caps size at 100 per call and tells you the from to page with.

• get_mappings lists the fields first and the raw mapping second, so a thousand-field index still answers the question it was asked.

Four tools — list_indices, list_shards, get_index_settings and get_mappings — also return their answer as typed structured output, so a client can read the rows instead of parsing the text. It is assembled from whatever room the readable answer left, and reports returned against total so a partial listing is visible as a number.

Run pnpm run measure against the built output to see the current figures for your own configuration.

Labelling several instances

Most setups declare this server more than once — one entry per cluster. The entries are otherwise identical, so a client shows two servers with the same name and nothing to tell them apart. ES_INSTANCE_LABEL becomes the server's display title, and it is the natural place to say which environment an entry reaches:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "es7-prod": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@agrica/elasticsearch7-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "ES_HOST": "https://es-prod:9200",
        "ES_API_KEY": "prod-key",
        "ES_INSTANCE_LABEL": "production",
        "ES_ADMIN_TOOLS": "true"
      }
    },
    "es7-staging": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@agrica/elasticsearch7-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "ES_HOST": "https://es-staging:9200",
        "ES_API_KEY": "staging-key",
        "ES_INSTANCE_LABEL": "staging",
        "ES_ADMIN_TOOLS": "true",
        "ES_ALLOW_DESTRUCTIVE": "true"
      }
    }
  }
}

That pair is the intended shape: diagnostics on both, deletes only on staging. Production keeps the tools that explain an unhealthy index and never exposes one that can remove data — the model cannot call what was never registered.

The label is also printed to stderr at startup, which is where to look when a client reports a connection but you cannot tell which cluster answered.

Multiple URLs Configuration

You can configure multiple Elasticsearch nodes for high availability and load balancing:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "elasticsearch7-mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@agrica/elasticsearch7-mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "ES_HOST": "https://es-node1:9200,https://es-node2:9200,https://es-node3:9200",
        "ES_API_KEY": "your-api-key"
      }
    }
  }
}

The client will automatically handle failover and load balancing between the configured nodes.

Running with Docker

Each release publishes a multi-arch image (linux/amd64, linux/arm64) to the GitHub Container Registry:

docker pull ghcr.io/agrica/elasticsearch7-mcp:latest

The server speaks stdio, so the container needs an interactive stdin and no published port. In an MCP client:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "elasticsearch7-mcp": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run", "--rm", "-i",
        "-e", "ES_HOST",
        "-e", "ES_API_KEY",
        "ghcr.io/agrica/elasticsearch7-mcp:latest"
      ],
      "env": {
        "ES_HOST": "your-elasticsearch-host",
        "ES_API_KEY": "your-api-key"
      }
    }
  }
}

The image needs no port published and no volume: it speaks stdio, and the MCP client owns its stdin and stdout.

Example Queries

Cluster Management

• "What is the health status of my Elasticsearch cluster?"

• "How many active nodes are in my cluster?"

Index Operations

• "What indices do I have in my Elasticsearch cluster?"

• "Create a new index called 'users' with 3 shards and 1 replica."

• "Reindex data from 'old_index' to 'new_index'."

Mapping Management

• "Show me the field mappings for the 'products' index."

• "Add a keyword type field called 'tags' to the 'products' index."

Search & Data Operations

• "Find all orders over $500 from last month."

• "Which products received the most 5-star reviews?"

• "Bulk import these customer records into the 'customers' index."

Template Management

• "Create an index template for logs with pattern 'logs-*'."

• "Show me all my index templates."

Diagnostics (needs ES_ADMIN_TOOLS=true)

• "The 'logs-2026' index is yellow — why are its shards unassigned?"

• "Is any node close to a disk watermark?"

• "Which of my indices is the largest, and how much of it is deleted documents?"

• "Has anyone disabled shard allocation on this cluster?"

• "Is a reindex still running?"

Destructive (needs ES_ALLOW_DESTRUCTIVE=true)

• "Delete the 'smoke-test-source' index."

• "Remove every document older than 2024 from 'logs-archive'."

Troubleshooting

Found a bug or want a tool that is missing? Open an issue on the GitHub repository. To work on the code, start from CONTRIBUTING.md.