Kong Admin API — MCP Server

An MCP server that exposes the full Kong Gateway Admin API (Enterprise & OSS) as tools an AI assistant can call. Configure it with your Admin API URL and admin token, and the assistant can manage services, routes, consumers, plugins, upstreams, certificates, RBAC, workspaces — anything the Admin API can do.

Built against the Kong Gateway Admin EE API 3.14.

What it can do

Every Admin API action is reachable. There are ergonomic CRUD tools for the standard entities plus a universal escape-hatch tool for everything else (nested resources, RBAC, keyring, schemas, declarative config, future endpoints).

Tool	Purpose
kong_list	List entities (GET /<entity>), with tags filtering and fetch_all auto-pagination
kong_get	Get one entity by id or name (GET /<entity>/<id>)
kong_create	Create an entity (POST /<entity>)
kong_update	Partial update (PATCH /<entity>/<id>)
kong_upsert	Create-or-replace (PUT /<entity>/<id>)
kong_delete	Delete (DELETE /<entity>/<id>)
kong_request	Any request to any Admin API path (the catch-all)
kong_node_info	Node info & version (GET /)
kong_node_status	Health / DB reachability (GET /status)
kong_list_workspaces	List EE workspaces
kong_plugin_schema	Get a plugin's config schema (GET /schemas/plugins/<name>)
kong_get_config	Show the active connection settings (token masked)
kong_configure	Override admin URL / token / workspace / TLS at runtime

The entity argument accepts plain names (services, routes, consumers, plugins, upstreams, certificates, ca_certificates, snis, vaults, consumer_groups, …) and nested collection paths (upstreams/<id>/targets, services/<id>/routes, consumers/<id>/key-auth, rbac/roles, …).

Install & build

cd kong-mcp
npm install      # also builds to dist/
npm run build    # rebuild after edits

Configuration

The connection is set via environment variables (see .env.example):

Variable	Default	Description
KONG_ADMIN_URL	http://localhost:8001	Base URL of the Admin API
KONG_ADMIN_TOKEN	(none)	Sent as the Kong-Admin-Token header (RBAC)
KONG_WORKSPACE	(none)	Default EE workspace to scope requests to
KONG_TLS_INSECURE	false	true to skip TLS verification (self-signed certs)
KONG_ADMIN_HEADERS	(none)	Extra headers, e.g. X-Foo: bar or a JSON object

You can also change the URL / token / workspace at runtime by asking the assistant to use the kong_configure tool — handy for switching between environments in one session.

Wiring it into an MCP client

Claude Code

claude mcp add kong \
  --env KONG_ADMIN_URL=http://localhost:8001 \
  --env KONG_ADMIN_TOKEN=your-rbac-token \
  -- node /Users/monochong/Desktop/kong-mcp/dist/index.js

Claude Desktop / generic mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "kong": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/Users/monochong/Desktop/kong-mcp/dist/index.js"],
      "env": {
        "KONG_ADMIN_URL": "http://localhost:8001",
        "KONG_ADMIN_TOKEN": "your-rbac-token",
        "KONG_WORKSPACE": "default"
      }
    }
  }
}

Restart the client after adding the server.

Example prompts

• "List all services, then show the routes for the one named web-api."
• "Create a service httpbin pointing at http://httpbin.org, add a route on /get, then enable the rate-limiting plugin at 100 req/min."
• "Show me the config schema for the jwt plugin."
• "Create a consumer alice and a key-auth credential for her."
• "Switch to the staging workspace and list its plugins." (uses kong_configure)
• "What Kong version is running and is the database reachable?"

Notes

• The token is masked anywhere config is displayed.
• List endpoints follow Kong's offset-based pagination; pass fetch_all: true to collect every page.
• For DB-less / declarative config, use kong_request with POST /config.
• Auth failures (401/403) and unreachable endpoints return clear, actionable error messages.

Development

npm run dev      # run from TypeScript source via tsx
npm run watch    # tsc --watch

License

MIT