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MCP for coding agents

Connect Claude Code or any MCP client to powder over HTTP with an API token, the tools it gets and the scopes each one needs.

Powder is a remote MCP server. A coding agent connected to it can list your apps, read deploy logs, redeploy and manage env vars without SSH. It reaches powder's own API only: no tool runs a command on a server.

Connect

The endpoint is <your powder dashboard URL>/api/mcp. It answers on the dashboard host only; when the public site runs on its own host (POWDER_SITE_HOST), the site host returns 404 for it.

In the dashboard open settings, api tokens. Pick an access level (see Scopes below) and create a token. It is shown once.
The same page shows the URL and ready-made configs with the new token filled in.

Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http powder <your powder dashboard URL>/api/mcp --header "Authorization: Bearer <token>"

Other clients that take a JSON config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "powder": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "<your powder dashboard URL>/api/mcp",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer <token>" }
    }
  }
}

Tools

Tool	What it does	Runs (and needs the scope of)
`list_apps`	Every app: id, container, server, domain, last deploy, uptime	`GET /api/projects`
`get_app`	One app: container state, ports, hostnames, domains, recent deploys, links	`GET /api/projects/<id>/context` and `GET /api/projects/<id>/domains`
`list_deploys`	The latest deploys of an app with status, commit and failure summary	`GET /api/servers/<server>/containers/<name>/deploys`
`get_deploy_log`	The last lines of one deploy's log (`tail`, default 200, max 2000)	`GET /api/deploys/<deploy id>`
`deploy_app`	Redeploy from the head of the app's branch, like the redeploy button	`POST /api/projects/<id>/redeploy`
`list_env_keys`	Env var names per scope with a length-only preview, never values	`GET /api/projects/<id>/env`
`set_env_var`	Create or overwrite one env var	`PUT /api/projects/<id>/env`
`delete_env_var`	Delete one env var	`DELETE /api/projects/<id>/env/<key>`
`list_servers`	Servers: id, name, host, status, proxy, TLS mode, base domain	`GET /api/servers/list`

Tools that take app accept the project id from list_apps, or the container name when only one server has a container with that name.

Each tool calls the same API route the dashboard uses for that action, with that route's checks. So deploy_app is refused while a deploy of the app is in flight, and set_env_var and delete_env_var validate the key and write the same audit and version history rows as the env page. A changed env var reaches the running app on its next deploy: call deploy_app after.

deploy_app always builds the head of the configured branch. To ship a particular commit, push it to that branch.

Deploy logs pass through powder's secret masking before they reach the agent: credentials in URLs, KEY=/TOKEN=/PASSWORD=-style assignments, bearer tokens and common token formats become [redacted]. Masking is best effort; a log that prints a secret in another shape can still show it.

deploy_app, set_env_var and delete_env_var are marked destructiveHint and the other tools readOnlyHint, so clients that ask before risky calls can do so.

Scopes

Authentication is a bearer API token. A session cookie is not accepted on /api/mcp.

A token with no scopes (full access) can use every tool. A scoped token needs POST /api/mcp to connect at all, and then, per tool, the scope of the route in the table above. Scopes match the real path, so a token can also be limited to one app, for example POST /api/projects/rep_abc/redeploy.

The tokens page offers two presets:

coding agent, read-only: POST /api/mcp plus the GET routes of list_apps, get_app, list_deploys, get_deploy_log, list_env_keys and list_servers.
coding agent, read and write: the read-only set plus POST /api/projects/*/redeploy, PUT /api/projects/*/env and DELETE /api/projects/*/env/*.

A tool outside the token's scopes answers with an error naming the missing scope. Revoking or expiring a token cuts the agent off on its next call.

Limits and errors

One JSON-RPC message per POST, answered with JSON. There is no SSE stream and no session, so GET and DELETE return 405. Batches are refused.
Requests are rate limited per client IP and per token (HTTP 429 with Retry-After), and bodies are capped at 256 KB.
Requests that carry an Origin header must come from the dashboard origin.
Errors are short messages such as powder answered 404: project not found. Internal errors are logged on the server and the agent sees only that the tool failed.