IONOS CLOUD MCP Server

IONOS CLOUD MCP Server

A read-only-by-default Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that connects your IONOS CLOUD account to any MCP-compatible AI assistant or autonomous AI agent: Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code (GitHub Copilot), Windsurf, Cline, Continue, OpenCode, and 5+ others. 118 read-only tools across 7 IONOS CLOUD products — list, inspect, and audit your infrastructure through natural-language prompts or programmatic agentic loops. Write operations across Compute (servers, volumes, networking, load balancing), Managed Kubernetes (clusters, node pools, nodes), DNS (zones, records, reverse records, DNSSEC) and Certificate Manager (certificates, auto-certificates, providers) are strictly opt-in and create real, billable resources — see Write operations.

Built and maintained by the IONOS Cloud team. The server runs as a local binary on your workstation, a CI runner, or inside a container. IONOS CLOUD API calls go directly to IONOS over HTTPS; no third-party AI provider sits in the data path.

Compatibility: MCP spec 2024-11-05 · Go 1.25+ for builds · OCI images for linux/amd64 and linux/arm64.

📚 Full product documentation, per-client setup guides, FAQ, and tutorials: docs.ionos.com/cloud/ai/mcp-server

Get started in 60 seconds (macOS or Linux, via Homebrew):

brew install ionos-cloud/ionos-cloud/ionoscloud-mcp

For other install paths (Docker, pre-built binary, go install, source), see Installation.

Why • Registries • Products • Install • Config • Tool loading • Transport • Write ops • Demo • Dev • Related • Changelog

Why

• Read-only by default, writes strictly opt-in — out of the box every tool is an inspection operation (list_*, get_*, head_*), so it's safe to connect to production accounts and to deploy inside unattended agent loops on CI runners. Write tools (create_*, update_*, delete_*) register only when you set IONOS_MCP_TOOL_SCOPE, and even then every create and delete requires a two-phase confirmation (preview → one-time token → execute). See Write operations.
• Local binary, no proxy — IONOS CLOUD API calls go directly from your machine to IONOS Cloud. No third-party AI vendor in the data path.
• EU-sovereign option — pair the server with the IONOS CLOUD AI Model Hub and both the API calls *and* the LLM inference terminate inside IONOS's German data centres. See the Fully Sovereign AI Workflow guide.
• Open source — Apache 2.0. Read the source, audit the behaviour, contribute, or fork.

Registries & Directories

This server is published across multiple MCP registries and IDE marketplaces:

Supported products

Read tools are named list_*, get_* and head_*; the opt-in write tools are create_*, update_*, delete_* plus domain verbs such as start_* and attach_*. In the default eager mode all tools register at startup; lazy mode defers Compute and Object Storage behind loader tools; dynamic mode exposes only three search/describe/call meta-tools for clients with hard tool caps. See Tool loading mode.

118 read-only tools, plus 102 opt-in write tools on Compute Engine, Kubernetes, DNS and Certificate Manager — see Write operations. For per-tool input/output schemas, see the per-product docs or the full Tool Reference at docs.ionos.com.

Installation

Pick whichever fits your workflow.

Homebrew (macOS, Linux) — recommended

brew install ionos-cloud/ionos-cloud/ionoscloud-mcp

Docker (linux/amd64, linux/arm64)

docker pull ghcr.io/ionos-cloud/ionoscloud-mcp:latest

Run with the MCP stdio transport (default):

docker run -i --rm \

-e IONOS_TOKEN="$IONOS_TOKEN" \ ghcr.io/ionos-cloud/ionoscloud-mcp

Or over HTTP (see Wire transport):

docker run --rm -p 8080:8080 \

-e IONOS_TOKEN="$IONOS_TOKEN" \ ghcr.io/ionos-cloud/ionoscloud-mcp --transport http --http-addr :8080

Pre-built binary

Download the archive for your OS/arch from the latest release. Available for Linux, macOS, and Windows on both amd64 and arm64.

go install

go install github.com/ionos-cloud/ionoscloud-mcp@latest

From source

git clone https://github.com/ionos-cloud/ionoscloud-mcp.git

cd ionoscloud-mcp make build

Configuration

You need an IONOS CLOUD account with API credentials.

# Required: API token for control-plane APIs (Compute, DNS, Billing, Certificate Manager, Object Storage management)

export IONOS_TOKEN="your-api-token"

Optional: only required if you use Object Storage data-plane tools

(listing objects, reading bucket configuration, checking access keys).

export IONOS_S3_ACCESS_KEY="your-s3-access-key" export IONOS_S3_SECRET_KEY="your-s3-secret-key"

Optional: opt in to write operations (default: read-only). Values are hierarchical,

so a single level suffices: "write" allows create/update; "destructive" also allows

delete (it implies "write"). See "Write operations".

export IONOS_MCP_TOOL_SCOPE="write"

Generate a token in the IONOS CLOUD DCD under Management → Token Management. Object Storage credentials are created under Storage & Backup → IONOS CLOUD Object Storage → Key management.

For least-privilege token scoping, see Authentication at docs.ionos.com.

Integrating with an MCP client (manual)

Add the server to your AI client's MCP config:

{

"mcpServers": { "ionoscloud": { "command": "/path/to/ionoscloud-mcp", "env": { "IONOS_TOKEN": "your-api-token", "IONOS_S3_ACCESS_KEY": "your-s3-access-key", "IONOS_S3_SECRET_KEY": "your-s3-secret-key" } } } }

The Object Storage credentials are only needed if you plan to use Object Storage tools.

Per-client setup guides for the 12 supported AI clients: Connect to an AI Client at docs.ionos.com.

Tool loading mode

The load mode selects how tools are exposed. Set it with either the --load-mode flag or the IONOS_MCP_LOAD_MODE environment variable; the flag wins if both are set, and otherwise the default is eager. Parsing is case-insensitive.

• `eager` (default): all tools register at startup. Recommended for Claude Code (which defers full schemas client-side via ToolSearch, paying ~1–3k tokens for names only) and the only working mode for clients that ignore notifications/tools/list_changed (Claude Desktop, claude.ai connectors, Claude in Chrome).

• `lazy`: Compute and Object Storage register only on demand. Two sentinel tools (ionos_load_compute_tools, ionos_load_objectstorage_tools) appear at startup; calling either registers the full product set and emits notifications/tools/list_changed. Use only if your MCP client honours that notification AND lacks client-side schema deferral — otherwise eager mode is cheaper.

• `dynamic` (alias: search): the server exposes only three meta-tools — ionos_search_tools, ionos_describe_tools and ionos_call_tool — and the model discovers and invokes the full catalogue through them at runtime. The real tool list never changes, so unlike lazy this needs no notifications/tools/list_changed support. Intended for clients with hard tool caps and no tool search of their own (e.g. Cursor's ~40-tool cap, Windsurf's 100). Trade-off: the model must search → describe → call rather than seeing tools directly, costing extra round-trips, so prefer eager on Claude Code.

The server logs the effective mode and its source (flag / env / default) to stderr at startup, e.g. load mode: dynamic (source: --load-mode flag).

{

"mcpServers": { "ionoscloud": { "command": "/path/to/ionoscloud-mcp", "args": ["--load-mode", "dynamic"], "env": { "IONOS_TOKEN": "your-api-token" } } } }

Tool-count limits: Windsurf caps connected MCP servers at 100 tools combined; Cursor caps at ~40 across all servers. With the default eager mode the server exceeds both. On Windsurf, lazy keeps the startup surface small enough; on Cursor (or any cap-limited client without its own tool search), use dynamic to present just three tools. For more information, see Selective Tool Loading.

Wire transport

The server speaks stdio by default — the mode every subprocess-spawning MCP client expects (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.). For remote or networked deployments (e.g. running the server centrally and pointing multiple clients at it), switch to the Streamable HTTP transport with `--