Inspect and manage Kubernetes and OpenShift clusters from Claude using your kubeconfig.

This community Kubernetes MCP server talks to the Kubernetes API directly instead of wrapping kubectl, and it works with every cluster in your kubeconfig, including OpenShift. It ships as a single native binary plus npm, PyPI and container packages, with optional toolsets for Helm, Tekton, KubeVirt and observability.

Who it is for

Platform and DevOps engineers
Developers debugging apps on Kubernetes
OpenShift users

Prompts to try

Once it is connected, ask in plain words. Claude decides when to use the server and asks before it changes anything important.

Prompt 1

Which pods in the production namespace are crash-looping, and what do their last logs say?

Prompt 2

Scale the web deployment in staging to five replicas and confirm the new pods are ready.

Prompt 3

List the recent warning events in the payments namespace and explain what they mean.

How to connect it

In Claude Code

$claude mcp add --transport stdio kubernetes -- npx -y kubernetes-mcp-server@latest

In the Claude desktop app

Add this to claude_desktop_config.json, then restart the app:

json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "kubernetes": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "kubernetes-mcp-server@latest"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Good to know

It uses your current kubeconfig; put read_only = true in a TOML file and pass it with --config for safe read-only access.

Unlock the setup steps

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How we checked it

Checked the containers/kubernetes-mcp-server repo (Apache-2.0, release v0.0.67, last commit 2026-10-17, created and led by a Red Hat engineer), the npm package kubernetes-mcp-server and the registry entry io.github.containers/kubernetes-mcp-server.

Source: github.com/containers/kubernetes-mcp-server

Kubernetes MCP Server