Forest MCP Server

Securely access your Forest data and actions from AI-enabled third party apps using the Model Context Protocol.

What is the Model Context Protocol (MCP)?

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard for connecting AI assistants to external data and tools through natural language.

What can the Forest MCP do?

The Forest MCP server lets AI tools like Claude, Dust, and others to:

• Access collection schemas
• Securely query and browse your data
• Execute actions on records

All of this while respecting the Roles & Permissions of your Forest project, and logging every activity, just like if they were performed through the UI.

The Forest MCP Server also enables other third party apps to embed and access Forest data and actions, for example in Zendesk, or n8n.

Enabling the Forest MCP Server

There are 2 ways to configure the Forest MCP Server:

• Standalone: the Forest MCP Server runs as an standalone service, pointing to your existing node.js or ruby back-end
• Mounted: the Forest MCP Server runs as part of your node.js back-end

Standalone Forest MCP Server

To run your Forest MCP Server as a standalone service, you will first need to download the mcp-server package:

npm install @forestadmin/mcp-server

You will then need to provide your FOREST_ENV_SECRET and FOREST_AUTH_SECRET variables to start the Forest MCP Server, to ensure it can authenticate and access the right back-end, corresponding to your project and environment of choice:

FOREST_ENV_SECRET=xxx FOREST_AUTH_SECRET=xxx npx forest-mcp-server

Follow this guide to retrieve your AUTH and ENV secrets for the relevant environment.

By default the standalone server reaches your back-end at the environment’s public URL. In a self-hosted setup, set FOREST_AGENT_URL to an internal address (e.g. http://forest-agent.internal:3310) to keep that traffic on your private network. It only affects how the server reaches your back-end; the OAuth URLs advertised to MCP clients are unchanged.

Your Forest MCP Server will be accessible at this URL: {your-standalone-server-url}/mcp

Mounted Forest MCP Server

This is only available with the node.js back-end. For other back-ends, refer to the Standalone method further down.

In your node.js’s index.js file, simply call the mountAiMcpServer() method when creating the back-end, for example:

const agent = createAgent(options).addDataSource(/* ... */).mountAiMcpServer();

Upon restarting your back-end, the Forest MCP Server will automatically start, as confirmed by the following console log:

info: [MCP] Server initialized successfully

Your Forest MCP Server URL will be {your-agent-url}/mcp

Your back-end URL can be found in the Forest UI’s Project Settings, under the Environments tab.

Note that each Environment has its own Back-end URL, and therefore its own Forest MCP Server URL.

When mounted, the MCP server intercepts the entire /oauth/* and /.well-known/* namespaces plus /mcp at your back-end’s root. Any request in those namespaces is captured by the MCP server — if it doesn’t serve that exact route (or your back-end already does), the request gets a 404/405 instead of reaching your back-end. So your own /oauth/callback or /.well-known/apple-app-site-association would break, not just OAuth.

Pass a basePath to narrow the MCP server to a dedicated prefix so your routes are left untouched. The OAuth and protocol routes move under the prefix; the .well-known discovery documents stay at the root (as OAuth discovery requires) but are served at prefix-suffixed paths such as /.well-known/oauth-authorization-server/ai, narrowing the .well-known claim to just those two paths:

const agent = createAgent(options).addDataSource(/* ... */).mountAiMcpServer({ basePath: '/ai' });

Your Forest MCP Server URL then becomes {your-agent-url}/ai/mcp. Because OAuth discovery must stay at the origin root, basePath requires your agent to be served at the domain root (it throws at startup if the agent URL already includes a path), and root /.well-known/* requests must still reach the agent.

The prefix applies to every route, including the protocol endpoint — so basePath: '/mcp' would make the endpoint /mcp/mcp. Prefer a distinct prefix such as /ai to avoid the repetition.

Available tools

The Forest MCP server exposes the following capabilities:

Read

Tool	Description
describeCollection	Get schema of a collection (fields, types, relations)
list	Search and list records with filters and pagination
listRelated	List related records

Write

Tool	Description
create	Create a new record
update	Update an existing record
delete	Delete one or more records
associate	Link records through a relation
dissociate	Unlink records from a relation

Actions

Tool	Description
getActionForm	Get form fields for a smart action
executeAction	Execute a smart action

Restrict tools

You can restrict which tools the MCP server exposes using enabledTools. Only the tools you list will be available, and new tools added in future releases will NOT be automatically enabled, so your configuration stays safe over time.

Mounted on agent

agent.mountAiMcpServer({
  enabledTools: ['describeCollection', 'list', 'listRelated'],
});

When enabledTools is not set, all tools are enabled by default.

describeCollection is always enabled, even if omitted from the list, as it is required for the MCP server to function properly.

Connect your AI assistant

Your MCP endpoint is available at /mcp (<your-agent-url>/mcp when mounted, <your-standalone-server-url>/mcp when standalone). On first connection, a browser window opens for you to log in with your Forest credentials; the assistant then operates with that user’s permissions.

Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http forest-admin <your-mcp-endpoint>

Use the MCP transport type "http" (not "sse" or "url"): the Forest MCP server uses Streamable HTTP. Your URL should still use https://. Clients that rely on mcp-remote (Claude Desktop, Windsurf, JetBrains) require Node.js 18+ (some versions need 20+).

Use cases

AI-assisted operations

Use Claude or other AI assistants to:

• Answer questions about your data
• Generate reports and insights
• Automate routine tasks
• Perform data analysis

Example prompts

“Show me all pending orders from the last 24 hours”

“What customers have the highest lifetime value?”

“Execute the ‘Send Invoice’ action on order #12345”

Security

The Forest MCP server:

• Respects all Forest permissions and roles
• Uses your environment’s authentication
• Logs all operations for audit purposes
• Never exposes sensitive data without proper access

Only provide MCP server access to trusted AI tools and users. The server can perform any operation that the authenticated user can perform.