MCP

This repository contains experimental Model Context Protocol (or MCP) servers for interacting with Algolia APIs. This MCP repo is something we’re sharing for you to explore and experiment with. Feel free to use it, fork it, or build on top of it — but just know that it’s not officially supported by Algolia and isn’t covered under our SLA. We might update it, break it, or remove it entirely at any time. If you customize or configure things here, there’s a chance that work could be lost. Also, using MCP in production could affect your Algolia usage.

If you have feedback or ideas (even code!), we’d love to hear it. Just know that we might use it to help improve our products. This project is provided “as is” and “as available,” with no guarantees or warranties. To be super clear: MCP isn’t considered an “API Client” for SLA purposes.

Installation

First follow the quick start, which will install Claude Desktop and setup a sample Fileserver MCP server. This is a great introduction to using MCP and will let you debug things using the official guide if there are issues.

Setup the prototype Algolia MCP server

Requirements:

• Go (https://go.dev/doc/install)

Clone the repo and build the server

Clone the repo, amd build the mcp server:

$ git clone [email protected]:algolia/mcp.git
$ cd mcp/cmd/mcp
$ go build

We need to have the full path of the built server binary:

$ pwd
/path/to/the/repo/cmd/mcp

NOTE: When adding this command to your configuration, you must specify the binary along with the path (/path/to/the/repo/cmd/mcp/mcp)

Update the settings to point to the new server

In Claude desktop edit the settings as per https://modelcontextprotocol.io/quickstart/user#2-add-the-filesystem-mcp-server and this time add the server definition for algolia (using the server path that you found earlier).

{
   "mcpServers": {
      "algolia": {
         "command": "/path/to/the/repo/cmd/mcp/mcp",
         "env": {
            "ALGOLIA_APP_ID": "",
            "ALGOLIA_INDEX_NAME": "",
            "ALGOLIA_API_KEY": "",
            "ALGOLIA_WRITE_API_KEY": ""  /* if you want to allow write operations, use your ADMIN key here */
         }
      }
   }
}

Restart Claude desktop, and you should see a new "algolia" tool is available.

Debugging

You can run the Inspector (see https://modelcontextprotocol.io/docs/tools/inspector) to check the MCP features and run them manually.

From the repo root, setup the environment

$ export ALGOLIA_APP_ID=""
$ export ALGOLIA_INDEX_NAME=""
$ export ALGOLIA_API_KEY=""
$ export ALGOLIA_WRITE_API_KEY=""  # if you want to allow write operations, use your ADMIN key here

Move into the server directory, and rebuild (if necessary):

$ cd cmd/mcp
$ go build # might already be up-to-date