Setting Up the Nhost MCP Server

The standalone nhost/mcp-nhost repository has been archived. Trying to initialize it with AI coding assistants (Cursor, Claude, or VS Code) results in initialization 404 errors.

Nhost has integrated MCP functionality directly into the official Nhost CLI.

1. Install CLI and Authenticate

Ensure you have the latest Nhost CLI:

brew install nhost/tap/nhost
nhost login
nhost mcp config

2. Configuration

When running nhost mcp start, pass --dot-nhost-folder with an absolute path to your project's .nhost directory.

If the CLI is launched from a child directory or non-project root, it outputs plain text warnings to stdout. Because MCP communicates over stdout using JSON-RPC, plain text warnings break the protocol handshake.

Add this entry to your MCP configuration (mcp_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "nhost": {
      "command": "/usr/local/bin/nhost",
      "args": [
        "mcp",
        "start",
        "--dot-nhost-folder",
        "/Users/username/workspace/my-app/.nhost"
      ]
    }
  }
}

By providing --dot-nhost-folder with an absolute path, the MCP server initializes reliably regardless of your IDE's working directory.