Admin Model Context Protocol (MCP) server

Give AI tools like Claude and Cursor write access to your Mintlify content and dashboard so they can edit pages, update settings, and open PRs.

About the admin MCP

The admin MCP server gives AI tools write access to your Mintlify content and settings. Use it to update content and access your dashboard. With the admin MCP, you can use your preferred AI tools to edit pages, restructure navigation, update docs.json, open pull requests, change settings, create workflows, and more.

Connect any MCP client like Claude, Claude Code, or Cursor to the admin MCP server to collaborate on your Mintlify content and settings with the same tools you use to write code. When you use the admin MCP server, all changes happen on a branch and require a pull request to merge.

The admin MCP server allows AI tools to access your Mintlify dashboard. Treat it like a coworker with write access. Connect it only from trusted AI tools and review every pull request before merging.

How the admin MCP differs from the search MCP

	Admin MCP	Search MCP
Audience	Your team	Your end users
Access	Read, edit, restructure, save, create workflows, manage settings	Read and search published pages
Endpoints	Hosted by Mintlify, scoped to your project	/mcp on your site domain
Output	Content edits, navigation changes, pull requests, workflow runs	Search results and page content

Connect to the admin MCP

You must have an interactive OAuth login against your Mintlify account to connect to the admin MCP. AI tools exchange that login for a session token scoped to one project.

Claude

1. Add the admin MCP as a custom connector

   1. Navigate to the Connectors page in the Claude settings.
   2. Click Add custom connector.
   3. Add the connector
      • Name: Admin MCP
      • URL: https://mcp.mintlify.com
   4. Click Add and complete the OAuth login.
2. Use the MCP in a chat

   Click the attachments button (the plus icon), then select your admin MCP server. Claude can now call the Mintlify admin MCP tools while answering your prompt.

Claude Code

Add the admin MCP server with the Claude Code CLI:

claude mcp add --transport http mintlify https://mcp.mintlify.com

On first use, Claude Code opens a browser window to complete the OAuth login. After authenticating, the session is reused for subsequent calls.

Cursor

1. Open the command palette with Command + Shift + P (Ctrl + Shift + P on Windows).
2. Search for Open MCP settings and click Add custom MCP.
3. In mcp.json, add the admin MCP:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mintlify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.mintlify.com"
    }
  }
}

4. Reload Cursor and complete the OAuth login when prompted.

How a session works

Every admin MCP session binds to a single Git branch. The flow is:

1. Check out a branch

   The first call must be checkout. It creates a fresh mintlify-mcp/<slug>-<sha> branch from your deploy branch (or attaches to an existing branch you name) and returns an editorUrl you can open to follow along in the dashboard editor.

   Call list_branches before checkout if you need to discover or filter existing branches in the repository.

2. Read, search, and edit

   The AI uses tools like search, read, list_nodes, edit_page, write_page, create_node, and update_config to make changes. All edits buffer on the session branch in real time—nothing touches your deploy branch yet.

3. Review the diff

   Call diff at any time to see exactly what changed since main. Open the editorUrl in your dashboard to see the same changes rendered.

4. Save

   Call save to flush the branch to Git. Use mode: "pr" (default) to open a pull request, or mode: "commit" to push directly to an existing PR branch.

5. Discard if needed

   Call discard_session to drop all in-session changes and release the branch.

Calling checkout again during an active session switches the session to the new branch. Use this to abandon an in-progress draft and start fresh without ending the conversation.

What the admin MCP can do

Content

• read — Fetch the full MDX of any page on the session branch.
• search — Find lines matching a substring or regular expression across every page.
• edit_page — Apply a targeted edit to a page.
• write_page — Overwrite a page’s full MDX content.

Navigation

• list_nodes — Walk the navigation tree with optional filters. Filter by parentId (use recursive: true to include all descendants), one or more node types, or any division scope: language, version, tab, dropdown, anchor, product, or item. Results are paginated through an opaque cursor.
• create_node — Add a new page, group, tab, anchor, version, language, product, or dropdown.
• update_node — Update a node’s properties in place (rename a group, change an icon, set a default version).
• move_node — Move a node, including renaming a page’s path.
• delete_node — Remove a node from the navigation.

Configuration

• update_config — Modify docs.json (theme, navigation roots, integrations, SEO settings).

Session

• checkout — Bind the session to a branch.
• list_branches — List Git branches available for the project, with optional query filtering. Returns the branch names, total count, and the deploy branch. Call this before checkout to attach to an existing branch by name.
• get_session_state — Inspect the current branch, edited files, and pending nav diff.
• diff — List all changes between the session and main.
• save — Open a pull request or commit to the session branch.
• discard_session — Drop the session and its in-flight changes.

Example prompts

After you connect the admin MCP, you can drive it with natural-language prompts. For example:

• “Check out a branch called add-billing-faq and create a new page under the FAQ group titled ‘Billing’. Draft answers for the five questions in this Linear issue.”
• “Find every page that mentions the deprecated legacy_token field and update the example to use api_key instead. Save as a PR titled ‘docs: replace legacy_token references’.”
• “Reorganize the API reference: move the webhooks pages into a new group called ‘Webhooks’ and update the icons to match the rest of the section.”

Best practices

Open the editor URL

Every checkout returns an editorUrl. Open it in a separate tab so you can watch the AI’s changes render live in the dashboard editor while you prompt.

Review every PR

The admin MCP is powerful enough to rewrite hundreds of pages in a single session. Before merging, read the PR diff and skim the rendered preview. Don’t rubber-stamp large changes.

Use slugs for branch names

Pass a slug to checkout (for example, add-quickstart) so the auto-generated branch is human-readable. Without it, the branch name derives from the session token and is hard to recognize in your repository.

Keep sessions focused

Keep each session focused to one change. Smaller sessions produce easier to review pull requests and preserve agents’ context windows. Use discard_session and checkout again to pivot to unrelated work.

Sessions hold an in-memory branch on the Mintlify side. If you abandon a session without saving or discarding it, the branch persists until your next checkout overwrites it. Avoid leaving stale mintlify-mcp/* branches in your repository. Clean them up periodically.