Sanity MCP Server

Transform your content operations with AI-powered tools for Sanity. Create, manage, and explore your content through natural language conversations in your favorite AI-enabled editor.

Sanity MCP Server implements the Model Context Protocol to connect your Sanity projects with AI tools like Claude, Cursor, and VS Code. It enables AI models to understand your content structure and perform operations through natural language instructions.

✨ Key Features

🤖 Content Intelligence: Let AI explore and understand your content library
🔄 Content Operations: Automate tasks through natural language instructions
📊 Schema-Aware: AI respects your content structure and validation rules
🚀 Release Management: Plan and organize content releases effortlessly
🔍 Semantic Search: Find content based on meaning, not just keywords

🔌 Quickstart
- Prerequisites
- Add configuration for the Sanity MCP server
🛠️ Available Tools
⚙️ Configuration
- 🔑 API Tokens and Permissions
- 👥 User Roles
📦 Node.js Environment Setup
💻 Development
- Debugging

🔌 Quickstart

Prerequisites

Before you can use the MCP server, you need to:

Deploy your Sanity Studio with schema manifest

The MCP server needs access to your content structure to work effectively. Deploy your schema manifest using one of these approaches:

# Option A: Force latest CLI version (recommended)
cd /path/to/studio
SANITY_CLI_SCHEMA_STORE_ENABLED=true npx --ignore-existing sanity@latest schema deploy

# Option B: If you have the CLI installed globally
npm install -g sanity
cd /path/to/studio
SANITY_CLI_SCHEMA_STORE_ENABLED=true sanity schema deploy

# Option C: Update your Studio first
cd /path/to/studio
npm update sanity
SANITY_CLI_SCHEMA_STORE_ENABLED=true npx sanity schema deploy

[!NOTE] Schema deployment requires both the latest CLI version and the SANITY_CLI_SCHEMA_STORE_ENABLED flag. This feature will be enabled by default in a future release.

Get your API credentials
- Project ID
- Dataset name
- API token with appropriate permissions

This MCP server can be used with any application that supports the Model Context Protocol. Here are some popular examples:

Claude Desktop
Cursor IDE
Visual Studio Code
Custom MCP-compatible applications

Add configuration for the Sanity MCP server

To use the Sanity MCP server, add the following configuration to your application's MCP settings:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "sanity": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@sanity/mcp-server@latest"],
      "env": {
        "SANITY_PROJECT_ID": "your-project-id",
        "SANITY_DATASET": "production",
        "SANITY_API_TOKEN": "your-sanity-api-token"
      }
    }
  }
}

The exact location of this configuration will depend on your application:

Application	Configuration Location
Claude Desktop	Claude Desktop configuration file
Cursor	Workspace or global settings
VS Code	Workspace or user settings (depends on extension)
Custom Apps	Refer to your app's MCP integration docs

You don't get it to work? See the section on Node.js configuration.

🛠️ Available Tools

Context & Setup

get_initial_context – IMPORTANT: Must be called before using any other tools to initialize context and get usage instructions.
get_sanity_config – Retrieves current Sanity configuration (projectId, dataset, apiVersion, etc.)

Document Operations

create_document – Create a new document with AI-generated content based on instructions
update_document – Update an existing document with AI-generated content based on instructions
patch_document - Apply direct patch operations to modify specific parts of a document without using AI generation
query_documents – Execute GROQ queries to search for and retrieve content
document_action – Perform document actions like publishing, unpublishing, or deleting documents

Release Management

list_releases – List content releases, optionally filtered by state
create_release – Create a new content release
edit_release – Update metadata for an existing release
schedule_release – Schedule a release to publish at a specific time
release_action – Perform actions on releases (publish, archive, unarchive, unschedule, delete)

Version Management

create_version – Create a version of a document for a specific release
discard_version – Delete a specific version document from a release
mark_for_unpublish – Mark a document to be unpublished when a specific release is published

Dataset Management

get_datasets – List all datasets in the project
create_dataset – Create a new dataset
update_dataset – Modify dataset settings

Schema Information

get_schema – Get schema details, either full schema or for a specific type
list_schema_ids – List all available schema IDs

GROQ Support

get_groq_specification – Get the GROQ language specification summary

Embeddings & Semantic Search

list_embeddings_indices – List all available embeddings indices
semantic_search – Perform semantic search on an embeddings index

Project Information

list_projects – List all Sanity projects associated with your account
get_project_studios – Get studio applications linked to a specific project

⚙️ Configuration

The server takes the following environment variables:

Variable	Description	Required
`SANITY_API_TOKEN`	Your Sanity API token	✅
`SANITY_PROJECT_ID`	Your Sanity project ID	✅
`SANITY_DATASET`	The dataset to use	✅
`SANITY_API_HOST`	API host (defaults to https://api.sanity.io)	❌
`MCP_USER_ROLE`	Determines tool access level (developer or editor)	❌

🔑 API Tokens and Permissions

The MCP server requires appropriate API tokens and permissions to function correctly. Here's what you need to know:

Generate a Robot Token:
- Go to your project's management console: Settings > API > Tokens
- Click "Add new token"
- Create a dedicated token for your MCP server usage
- Store the token securely - it's only shown once!
Required Permissions:
- The token needs appropriate permissions based on your usage
- For basic read operations: viewer role is sufficient
- For content management: editor or developer role recommended
- For advanced operations (like managing datasets): administrator role may be needed
Dataset Access:
- Public datasets: Content is readable by unauthenticated users
- Private datasets: Require proper token authentication
- Draft and versioned content: Only accessible to authenticated users with appropriate permissions
Security Best Practices:
- Use separate tokens for different environments (development, staging, production)
- Never commit tokens to version control
- Consider using environment variables for token management
- Regularly rotate tokens for security

👥 User Roles

The server supports two user roles:

developer: Access to all tools
editor: Content-focused tools without project administration

📦 Node.js Environment Setup

Important for Node Version Manager Users: If you use nvm, mise, fnm, nvm-windows or similar tools, you'll need to follow the setup steps below to ensure MCP servers can access Node.js. This is a one-time setup that will save you troubleshooting time later. This is an ongoing issue with MCP servers.

🛠 Quick Setup for Node Version Manager Users

First, activate your preferred Node.js version:

# Using nvm
nvm use 20   # or your preferred version

# Using mise
mise use node@20

# Using fnm
fnm use 20

Then, create the necessary symlinks (choose your OS):

On macOS/Linux:
```
sudo ln -sf "$(which node)" /usr/local/bin/node && sudo ln -sf "$(which npx)" /usr/local/bin/npx
```
[!NOTE] While using sudo generally requires caution, it's safe in this context because:
- We're only creating symlinks to your existing Node.js binaries
- The target directory (/usr/local/bin) is a standard system location for user-installed programs
- The symlinks only point to binaries you've already installed and trust
- You can easily remove these symlinks later with sudo rm
On Windows (PowerShell as Administrator):
```
New-Item -ItemType SymbolicLink -Path "C:\Program Files\nodejs\node.exe" -Target (Get-Command node).Source -Force
New-Item -ItemType SymbolicLink -Path "C:\Program Files\nodejs\npx.cmd" -Target (Get-Command npx).Source -Force
```

Verify the setup:

# Should show your chosen Node version
/usr/local/bin/node --version  # macOS/Linux
"C:\Program Files\nodejs\node.exe" --version  # Windows

🤔 Why Is This Needed?

MCP servers are launched by calling node and npx binaries directly. When using Node version managers, these binaries are managed in isolated environments that aren't automatically accessible to system applications. The symlinks above create a bridge between your version manager and the system paths that MCP servers use.

🔍 Troubleshooting

If you switch Node versions often:

Remember to update your symlinks when changing Node versions

You can create a shell alias or script to automate this:

# Example alias for your .bashrc or .zshrc
alias update-node-symlinks='sudo ln -sf "$(which node)" /usr/local/bin/node && sudo ln -sf "$(which npx)" /usr/local/bin/npx'

To remove the symlinks later:

# macOS/Linux
sudo rm /usr/local/bin/node /usr/local/bin/npx

# Windows (PowerShell as Admin)
Remove-Item "C:\Program Files\nodejs\node.exe", "C:\Program Files\nodejs\npx.cmd"

💻 Development

Install dependencies:

pnpm install

Build and run in development mode:

pnpm run dev

Build the server:

pnpm run build

Run the built server:

pnpm start

Debugging

For debugging, you can use the MCP inspector:

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector -e SANITY_API_TOKEN=<token> -e SANITY_PROJECT_ID=<project_id> -e SANITY_DATASET=<ds> -e MCP_USER_ROLE=developer node path/to/build/index.js

This will provide a web interface for inspecting and testing the available tools.