🔮 Sanity MCP Server

The self-hosted Sanity MCP that Sanity deprecated. Full CRUD, atomic transactions, reference tracking, and tools the official server doesn't have.

Why This Exists

Sanity's official MCP server (@sanity/mcp-server) is archived. They want you to use their hosted solution at mcp.sanity.io with OAuth.

That's fine if you want:

• OAuth flows for every AI tool

• Dependency on Sanity's infrastructure

• No offline or air-gapped usage

• Whatever tools they decide to expose

This MCP gives you:

• 🔑 Simple token auth — one env var, done

• 🏠 Self-hosted — runs anywhere, no external dependencies

• 🛠️ More tools — reference tracking, diff, history, bulk ops

• ⚡ Works offline — no OAuth dance, no hosted service required

Related MCP server: Agentic CMS

Quick Start

npx @purple-horizons/sanity-mcp

Or install globally:

npm install -g @purple-horizons/sanity-mcp

MCP Configuration

Add to your Claude Desktop, Cursor, or VS Code config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "sanity": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["@purple-horizons/sanity-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "SANITY_PROJECT_ID": "your-project-id",
        "SANITY_DATASET": "production",
        "SANITY_TOKEN": "sk-your-token"
      }
    }
  }
}

Tools

📖 Read Operations

✏️ Write Operations

🚀 Unique Tools (Not in Sanity's Official MCP)

What Makes This Better

1. Reference Tracking

Before you delete that image asset, you probably want to know what's using it:

sanity_references id="image-abc123"
→ Shows all 47 blog posts using that image

Sanity's official MCP doesn't have this. You'd find out the hard way.

2. Document Diffing

Content editor made changes. What changed?

sanity_diff idA="drafts.post-xyz" idB="post-xyz"
→ Shows exactly which fields differ

See the diff before you publish. Or compare any two documents.

3. Atomic Bulk Operations

Update 50 documents and they all need to succeed together? One transaction:

sanity_bulk operations=[
  { "patch": { "id": "post-1", "set": { "featured": true }}},
  { "patch": { "id": "post-2", "set": { "featured": false }}},
  ...
]
→ All or nothing. No partial states.

With dryRun: true, validate before executing.

4. Draft Status at a Glance

Is there a draft? Is it published? Both?

sanity_draft_status id="post-abc123"
→ { status: "both", hasUnpublishedChanges: true }

No more manually checking drafts.{id} vs {id}.

Environment Variables

Getting Your Token

1. Go to sanity.io/manage

2. Select your project → API → Tokens

3. Add new token with Editor or higher permissions

4. Copy and set as SANITY_TOKEN

GROQ Examples

// All posts, newest first
*[_type == "post"] | order(_createdAt desc)

// Specific post by slug
*[_type == "post" && slug.current == "hello-world"][0]

// Posts with expanded author
*[_type == "post"]{
  title,
  slug,
  "author": author->name,
  "category": category->title
}

// Count by category
{
  "total": count(*[_type == "post"]),
  "published": count(*[_type == "post" && !(_id in path("drafts.**"))])
}

// Full-text search
*[_type == "post" && title match "AI*"]

Development

# Clone
git clone https://github.com/Purple-Horizons/sanity-mcp.git
cd sanity-mcp

# Install
npm install

# Build
npm run build

# Test
npm test

# Run locally
npm run dev

Comparison

tl;dr: We're better for self-hosting, developer tooling, and content operations. They're better if you need releases and semantic search with embeddings.

License

MIT © Purple Horizons

Links

• Sanity GROQ Docs

• MCP Protocol

• Purple Horizons

• Report Issues