MCP Server Overview - Control Plane

2 min read Original article ↗

The Control Plane MCP Server enables AI assistants and coding tools to interact directly with your Control Plane infrastructure. Using the Model Context Protocol (MCP), you can create, manage, and deploy resources through natural language conversations.

What is MCP?

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that allows AI models to securely connect to external tools and data sources. With the Control Plane MCP Server, AI assistants can:

Quick Start

MCP Server Endpoint

Authentication

The MCP Server requires authentication via a service account token. Include the token in the Authorization header:

Authorization: <your-service-account-token>

The Control Plane MCP Server works with any AI assistant or development tool that supports remote MCP servers. Below are setup guides for popular tools:

Service Account Permissions

The MCP Server respects all Control Plane policies and permissions. Your service account’s capabilities depend on the groups and policies assigned to it.

Built-in Groups

Control Plane provides two built-in groups for common permission patterns:

GroupPermissionsUse Case
viewersview on all resourcesRead-only exploration, querying infrastructure status
superusersmanage on all resourcesFull automation, creating and modifying all resources

Custom Permissions

For more granular control, you can:

  1. Create custom groups with specific members
  2. Define policies that grant targeted permissions
  3. Assign your service account to groups that match your use case
Use CaseRecommended Setup
Quick explorationAdd service account to viewers group
Full development accessAdd service account to superusers group
Production automationCreate custom group with specific policies for required resources
Team-specific accessCreate group per team with policies scoped to their GVCs

Best Practices

For the best results, structure your prompts with:

  1. Context: Org and GVC
  2. Action: What you want to do
  3. Target: Which resource
  4. Details: Specific configuration values

Next Steps