zapi-mcp

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MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for the Zabbix API.

Built for network operations: a single daily_brief call summarizes active problems plus site-specific categories (DHCP pool usage, SNAT session usage, core-network problems, …), and individual tools query problems, hosts, and item values. Organization-specific tags live in a config file, not the code, so the server stays generic.

Version-adaptive auth: works against Zabbix 6.0 LTS (user + auth field) and forward-compatible with 6.4 / 7.0 (username + Authorization: Bearer).

Documentation: https://shigechika.github.io/zapi-mcp/

Features

Related MCP server: DevHelm MCP Server

Setup

# uv
uv pip install zapi-mcp

# pip
pip install zapi-mcp

Or from source:

git clone https://github.com/shigechika/zapi-mcp.git
cd zapi-mcp

# uv
uv sync

# pip
pip install -e .

Configuration

Set the following environment variables:

The API user needs read permission for the host groups you query, plus acknowledge permission if you use acknowledge_problem, maintenance-write permission if you use set_maintenance, and maintenance-read permission (usually included by default) for get_maintenance_windows and the daily_brief "In Maintenance" section.

Active problems in daily_brief

Problems are grouped by severity and listed newest-first, each annotated with its age (e.g. 3h ago). Problems older than the recent window (ZABBIX_BRIEF_RECENT_HOURS, default 24h) are folded to a single … and N older (stale; oldest …) line — so a backlog of alerts that Zabbix keeps active because their recovery is never auto-confirmed (ICMP ping down, RDP down, …) doesn't bury what just happened. Section headers carry the true total and show showing N of TOTAL when the fetch is capped, never a silent truncation.

Maintenance windows in daily_brief

Right after Active Problems, daily_brief lists hosts covered by a maintenance window that's active now, plus any window starting later today — so a planned outage isn't mistaken for a new incident by whatever else is watching those hosts. The ## In Maintenance section is omitted entirely when there's nothing to show (no news is no maintenance). Windows starting tomorrow or later, and expired windows, aren't included here; call get_maintenance_windows (optionally with include_expired=True) for the full picture.

Categories for daily_brief (optional)

daily_brief always lists active problems. To add site-specific sections — DHCP pool exhaustion, SNAT session usage, core-network problems — point ZABBIX_CATEGORIES_INI at an INI file. Each [section] is one category:

[dhcp]
name = DHCP Pool Usage
# Zabbix host tag identifying the group
tag = dhcp-pool-usage
# report current values for this exact item key
item_key = usage
# flag values >= this
threshold = 80

[snat]
name = SNAT Session Pool
tag = snat-pool-usage
# substring match (catches pool.node0.usage etc.)
item_key_search = .usage
threshold = 80

[core]
name = Core Network
tag = role
# the tag must equal this value
tag_value = main
# no item key -> report active problems instead

• tag (required): host tag identifying the category. With tag_value, the tag must equal it (Equal); without, any host carrying the tag matches (Exists).

• item_key / item_key_search: when either is set, the section reports current item values sorted high-to-low. item_key matches the key exactly; use item_key_search for keys that embed an id (e.g. .usage catches pool.node0.usage). When neither is set, it reports active problems for the tag.

• threshold: optional; values at or above it are flagged.

See categories.ini.example. When the variable is unset or the file is missing, daily_brief reports active problems only.

Usage

Claude Code

Add to .mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "zapi-mcp": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "zapi-mcp",
      "env": {
        "ZABBIX_URL": "https://zabbix.example.com",
        "ZABBIX_USER": "api-user",
        "ZABBIX_PASSWORD": "",
        "ZABBIX_CATEGORIES_INI": "/path/to/categories.ini"
      }
    }
  }
}

Claude Desktop

Add to claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "zapi-mcp": {
      "command": "zapi-mcp",
      "env": {
        "ZABBIX_URL": "https://zabbix.example.com",
        "ZABBIX_USER": "api-user",
        "ZABBIX_PASSWORD": ""
      }
    }
  }
}

Direct Execution

export ZABBIX_URL=https://zabbix.example.com
export ZABBIX_USER=api-user
export ZABBIX_PASSWORD=your-password
zapi-mcp

CLI Options

zapi-mcp --version   # Print version and exit
zapi-mcp --check     # Verify environment variables and authentication, then exit
zapi-mcp --brief     # Print the daily_brief to stdout and exit (handy for cron)
zapi-mcp             # Start MCP server (STDIO, default)

--check exit codes: 0 success, 1 config error, 2 auth/connection error.

--brief exit codes: 0 success, 1 a section failed (auth, the active-problems fetch, or category loading — see the embedded Error: line in the output).

Development

git clone https://github.com/shigechika/zapi-mcp.git
cd zapi-mcp

# uv
uv sync --dev
uv run pytest -v
uv run ruff check .

# pip
python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install -e . && .venv/bin/pip install pytest pytest-cov respx ruff
.venv/bin/pytest -v
.venv/bin/ruff check .

Live smoke test

pytest checks logic against fixtures; it cannot tell you that a tool has stopped returning real data. scripts/smoke_test.py runs every registered tool against the configured Zabbix and fails on empty, malformed or error answers:

# needs the same ZABBIX_* environment variables as the server
uv run python scripts/smoke_test.py
uv run python scripts/smoke_test.py --only get_problems --traceback

• Read-only. acknowledge_problem and set_maintenance are skipped by name — an acknowledgement is visible to every operator and cannot be quietly undone, and set_maintenance opens a real maintenance window that suppresses alerts — and a test enforces that. The report prints tool names and statuses only, never payloads; server-authored error text is redacted too, since Zabbix quotes the host it was asked about. --traceback still shows the full text on the operator's own terminal.

• Arguments that would identify real hosts, groups or tag values are discovered at run time, never written into scripts/smoke_probes.py. Two tests enforce that: one refuses those parameters as literals, the other bans anything address-shaped (mail address, URL, hostname, IPv4, IPv6) anywhere in the file.

• An empty answer is a real observation here — a monitoring system with nothing wrong is the goal — so probes assert the envelope the tool must produce rather than a row count.

• CI enforces the cheap half: a tool registered without a probe spec fails the build (tests/test_smoke_probes.py), so adding a tool forces the question "how would we know it works?".

• scripts/smoke_harness.py is the engine and holds no Zabbix knowledge: it is kept identical across the servers that share it, so fix engine bugs once and sync the file rather than patching this copy.

Releasing

Releases are automated with release-please. Merging Conventional Commits (feat:, fix:, …) to main keeps a release PR open with the next version and changelog. Merging that PR tags vX.Y.Z and publishes a GitHub Release, whose release: published event triggers the release workflow to build and publish to PyPI and the MCP Registry. release-please owns the version in zapi_mcp/__init__.py and server.json (do not bump them by hand).

Roadmap

• Streamable HTTP transport + OAuth2 for remote / mobile use

• Visual rendering of key metrics

License

MIT