Sitecore MCP Server: Try It by Yourself!

Anton Tishchenko

May 6, 2025

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My first article about Sitecore MCP received a very warm welcome. And probably many of you wanted to try it yourself. It is very easy. It will take less than ten minutes to start.

Prerequisites

In short, you need Sitecore + Cursor. In detail, the prerequisites are described below.

First, you need Sitecore. We need GraphQL and Sitecore Item API. GraphQL has been supported since version 9.1, and the Sitecore Item API has been supported since version 6.6. Anything newer than 9.1 should be fine. And, following our statistics, it will work with 98% of Sitecore websites.

Sitecore edition doesn’t matter. For now, we have only an API for item management, the CMS part of the platform. It will work with XM, XP, or XM Cloud.

The second prerequisite is an application and an AI agent. MCP servers are a new feature, and they are supported only by the desktop application for now. Anthropic is working on the implementation of supporting the MCP server for web-based applications, but I haven’t tried it yet, and I can’t recommend it. You can use Claude Desktop, VS Code + Copilot, or Cursor. All of them work about the same. My subjective recommendation is Cursor + Anthropic Claude 3.7. Or if you want to work with Sitecore GraphQL Schema, then Cursor + Google Gemini Pro 2.5. Subscription to Cursor starts from 20 USD per month. A two-week free trial period allows you to evaluate whether it is useful for you.

If you are a seasoned AI user or vibe coder, then you probably know what tools work better for you. Use your favorite ones!

Sitecore MCP Server

Sitecore MCP Server is open-source and hosted on GitHub. You can run it from sources, I will explain it in future articles. But it is also distributed as an NPM package. And it is the easiest way is to run it.

Configuration

Model Context Protocol servers are configured in the standard way. It is a JSON-based configuration.

Cursor

Cursor allows the configuration of the MCP servers globally for all projects, and locally only for certain projects.

/.cursor/mcp.json is the configuration path per project
%UserProfile%/.cursor/mcp.json is the configuration for global MCP servers on Windows
~/.cursor/mcp.json is the configuration path for global MCP servers on macOS and Linux
You can open Cursor Settings > MCP > Add new global MCP Server. It is the quickest way to find the configuration in your system.

I recommend configuring MCP servers per project.

Add MCP Server

The configuration file should look like this:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "Sitecore": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["@antonytm/mcp-sitecore-server@latest"],
      "env": {
        "TRANSPORT": "stdio",
        "GRAPHQL_ENDPOINT": "https://xmcloudcm.localhost/sitecore/api/graph/",
        "GRAPHQL_SCHEMAS": "edge,master,core",
        "GRAPHQL_API_KEY": "{6D3F291E-66A5-4703-887A-D549AF83D859}",
        "GRAPHQL_HEADERS": "",
        "ITEM_SERVICE_DOMAIN": "sitecore",
        "ITEM_SERVICE_USERNAME": "admin",
        "ITEM_SERVICE_PASSWORD": "b",
        "ITEM_SERVICE_SERVER_URL": "https://xmcloudcm.localhost/"
      }
    }
  }
}

This configuration applies to version 0.1.6. Please, make sure to follow the latest configuration once you configure your project.

type stdio tells that the server will use standard input/output for communication between the MCP server and agent
command npx tells that the server will run node package
args is the name of the NPM package that we will run. It is @antonytm/mcp-sitecore-server@latest
env contains environment variables and requires your attention
- TRANSPORT configures what protocol should be used. It can be stdio or sse. Use stdio by default.
- GRAPHQL_ENDPOINT configures the Sitecore GraphQL Endpoint. Here you should put your endpoint.
- GRAPHQL_SCHEMAS configures Sitecore GraphQL schemas that could be used. The edge schema is available by default. If you have any other GraphQL schemas, you can add them separated by commas.
- GRAPHQL_API_KEY configures the Sitecore GraphQL API key. You need to put your key here.
- GRAPHQL_HEADERS configures headers that should be passed in the GraphQL requests. Use it if you don’t want to authenticate via API key, as it is passed as a GET parameter. It could be useful for production or the UAT environment. Leave it blank for local and QA environments.
- ITEM_SERVICE_SERVER_URL configures the Sitecore server URL for ItemService. You should put your URL here.
- ITEM_SERVICE_DOMAIN configures the Sitecore domain for user authentication. Leave it sitecore if you have the default Sitecore configuration.
- ITEM_SERVICE_USERNAME configures the Sitecore user that will be used for ItemService. I recommend that you create your specific user. E.g., AI, to be able to see changes that were made by AI agents.
- ITEM_SERVICE_PASSWORD configures the Sitecore user password. Please, make sure that you have updated it with the right one.

You can have as many Sitecore MCP servers as you want. You can have local1, local2, qa, etc.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "Sitecore Local 1": {
	    ... 
    },
    "Sitecore Local 2": {
	    ...
    },
    "Sitecore QA": {
	    ...
    },
  }
}

You need to make sure that you ask the AI Agent to work with the required server if you have a few.

Once you have finished the configuration, you should get the list of tools available from the Sitecore MCP server.

VS Code

VS Code is smart enough to detect the Cursor per project configuration. If you have already configured the MCP server for Cursor, you can do nothing for VS Code.

If you don’t use Cursor, you need to add the Sitecore MCP server to the VS Code configuration.

/.vscode/mcp.json is the configuration path per project
%UserProfile%/AppData/Roaming/Code/User/settings.json is the configuration path for the user on Windows
$HOME/Library/Application/Support/Code/User/settings.json is the configuration path for the user on macOS
You can use the MCP List Servers from the command palette to add new MCP servers

The configuration file looks very similar to Cursor. The difference is that the top-level JSON property should be servers, not mcpServers, for the project-level configuration file. And if you configure the global MCP Server, you need to wrap it with the mcp property, as settings.json is a common configuration file, not only for MCP.

Claude Desktop

Claude Desktop has the same configuration file format as Cursor. The configuration file could be found:

%UserProfile%/AppData/Roaming/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json for Windows
$HOME/Library/Application/Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json for macOS

Usage

Now, you are ready to try it in action. Start from something simple to check if the AI Agent sees your MCP server's tools and can run them.

It works!

Now you can see that it works, you can do whatever you want, it is all up to your imagination! From what will you start?

Conclusion

Model Context Protocol servers empower AI agents with new capabilities. You can add the ability to work with Sitecore. It will take 5 minutes to install Cursor(or Claude Desktop or VS Code), 5 minutes to configure the Sitecore MCP server, and you are ready to go. You can experiment with it.

Now the content editors can do their day-to-day work quickly. They can focus on content and leave chore operations to AI. The developers can easily troubleshoot the bugs, speed up bulk operations. It can make work of everyone easier. I believe in it!

Please, try it and leave me feedback. What does work well? What does not work? What could be better? What tools are missing?