Add the Grafana MCP server to VS Code

Prerequisites

• VS Code installed.
• GRAFANA_URL — URL of your Grafana instance, e.g. https://myinstance.grafana.net or http://localhost:3000.
• GRAFANA_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_TOKEN — Grafana service account token used to authenticate (Grafana 9.0+).

Setup

{
  "servers": {
    "grafana": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "--rm",
        "-i",
        "-e",
        "GRAFANA_URL",
        "-e",
        "GRAFANA_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_TOKEN",
        "grafana/mcp-grafana",
        "-t",
        "stdio"
      ],
      "env": {
        "GRAFANA_URL": "<GRAFANA_URL>",
        "GRAFANA_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_TOKEN": "<GRAFANA_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_TOKEN>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Gotchas

• VS Code uses the `servers` key (not `mcpServers`) and requires `type`.

VS Code is the exception to every other client: its top-level key is "servers", not "mcpServers", and each entry needs an explicit "type" (for example "http" or "stdio"). Secrets are not inlined; instead you declare an "inputs" array and reference each value as ${input:id}, so VS Code prompts for it once and never writes it to disk. Remote servers connect natively with OAuth.