Forest MCP Server

Securely access your Forest data and actions from AI-enabled third party apps using the Model Context Protocol.

What is the Model Context Protocol (MCP)?

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard for connecting AI assistants to external data and tools through natural language.

What can the Forest MCP do?

The Forest MCP server lets AI tools like Claude, Dust, and others to:

• Access collection schemas
• Securely query and browse your data
• Execute actions on records

All of this while respecting the Roles & Permissions of your Forest project, and logging every activity, just like if they were performed through the UI.

The Forest MCP Server also enables other third party apps to embed and access Forest data and actions, for example in Zendesk, or n8n.

Enabling the Forest MCP Server

There are 2 ways to configure the Forest MCP Server:

• Standalone: the Forest MCP Server runs as an standalone service, pointing to your existing node.js or ruby back-end
• Mounted: the Forest MCP Server runs as part of your node.js back-end

Standalone Forest MCP Server

To run your Forest MCP Server as a standalone service, you will first need to download the mcp-server package:

npm install @forestadmin/mcp-server

You will then need to provide your FOREST_ENV_SECRET and FOREST_AUTH_SECRET variables to start the Forest MCP Server, to ensure it can authenticate and access the right back-end, corresponding to your project and environment of choice:

FOREST_ENV_SECRET=xxx FOREST_AUTH_SECRET=xxx npx forest-mcp-server

Follow this guide to retrieve your AUTH and ENV secrets for the relevant environment.

Standalone configuration

The standalone Forest MCP Server is configured entirely through environment variables:

Variable	Required	Default	Description
FOREST_ENV_SECRET	Yes	—	Your environment secret, used to authenticate and reach the right back-end.
FOREST_AUTH_SECRET	Yes	—	Your authentication secret. Must match the one of the corresponding back-end.
MCP_SERVER_PORT	No	3931	Port the standalone server listens on.
FOREST_MCP_ENABLED_TOOLS	No	all tools	Comma-separated allowlist of tools to expose (see Restrict tools).
FOREST_AGENT_URL	No	your environment’s back-end URL	URL the MCP Server uses to reach your back-end’s data layer.
FOREST_MCP_ACCESS_TOKEN_TTL_SECONDS	No	3600 (1 hour)	Shortens the OAuth access token lifetime (see Token lifetimes). Minimum 60.
FOREST_MCP_REFRESH_TOKEN_TTL_SECONDS	No	unbounded	Shortens the time between two interactive logins (see Token lifetimes). Minimum 60.
FOREST_MCP_ALLOWED_OAUTH_CLIENTS	No	any registered client	Comma-separated domains of the OAuth clients allowed to connect (see Restrict which AI clients can connect).

Set FOREST_AGENT_URL when the MCP Server runs next to a self-hosted back-end reachable at an internal address (e.g. http://localhost:3310), so tool calls hit it directly instead of the public back-end URL registered in Forest.

Your Forest MCP Server will be accessible at this URL: {your-standalone-server-url}/mcp

Mounted Forest MCP Server

This is only available with the node.js back-end. For other back-ends, refer to the Standalone method further down.

In your node.js’s index.js file, simply call the mountAiMcpServer() method when creating the back-end, for example:

const agent = createAgent(options).addDataSource(/* ... */).mountAiMcpServer();

Upon restarting your back-end, the Forest MCP Server will automatically start, as confirmed by the following console log:

info: [MCP] Server initialized successfully

Your Forest MCP Server URL will be {your-agent-url}/mcp

Your back-end URL can be found in the Forest UI’s Project Settings, under the Environments tab.

Note that each Environment has its own Back-end URL, and therefore its own Forest MCP Server URL.

When mounted, the MCP server intercepts the entire /oauth/* and /.well-known/* namespaces plus /mcp at your back-end’s root. Any request in those namespaces is captured by the MCP server — if it doesn’t serve that exact route (or your back-end already does), the request gets a 404/405 instead of reaching your back-end. So your own /oauth/callback or /.well-known/apple-app-site-association would break, not just OAuth.

Pass a basePath to narrow the MCP server to a dedicated prefix so your routes are left untouched. The OAuth and protocol routes move under the prefix; the .well-known discovery documents stay at the root (as OAuth discovery requires) but are served at prefix-suffixed paths such as /.well-known/oauth-authorization-server/ai, narrowing the .well-known claim to just those two paths:

const agent = createAgent(options).addDataSource(/* ... */).mountAiMcpServer({ basePath: '/ai' });

Your Forest MCP Server URL then becomes {your-agent-url}/ai/mcp. Because OAuth discovery must stay at the origin root, basePath requires your agent to be served at the domain root (it throws at startup if the agent URL already includes a path), and root /.well-known/* requests must still reach the agent.

The prefix applies to every route, including the protocol endpoint — so basePath: '/mcp' would make the endpoint /mcp/mcp. Prefer a distinct prefix such as /ai to avoid the repetition.

Available tools

The Forest MCP server exposes the following capabilities:

Read

Tool	Description
describeCollection	Get schema of a collection (fields, types, relations)
list	Search and list records with filters and pagination
listRelated	List related records

Write

Tool	Description
create	Create a new record
update	Update an existing record
delete	Delete one or more records
associate	Link records through a relation
dissociate	Unlink records from a relation

Actions

Tool	Description
getActionForm	Get form fields for a smart action
executeAction	Execute a smart action

Restrict tools

You can restrict which tools the MCP server exposes using enabledTools. Only the tools you list will be available, and new tools added in future releases will NOT be automatically enabled, so your configuration stays safe over time.

Mounted on agent

agent.mountAiMcpServer({
  enabledTools: ['describeCollection', 'list', 'listRelated'],
});

When enabledTools is not set, all tools are enabled by default.

describeCollection is always enabled, even if omitted from the list, as it is required for the MCP server to function properly.

Restrict which AI clients can connect

By default, any OAuth client application can register against the MCP server through Dynamic Client Registration and, once one of your users signs in, obtain tokens. Use allowedOAuthClients (@forestadmin/agent ≥ 1.92.0, @forestadmin/mcp-server ≥ 1.21.0) to accept only approved client applications:

Mounted on agent

agent.mountAiMcpServer({
  allowedOAuthClients: ['dust.tt'],
});

A client is allowed only when every redirect URI it registered is an http(s) URI on a listed domain or one of its subdomains (dust.tt matches eu.dust.tt). Matching uses redirect URIs because they are the one piece of registration metadata an impostor cannot benefit from — the authorization code is only ever delivered there. Self-declared fields such as the client name are ignored, and custom (non-http(s)) scheme URIs are rejected even on an allowed domain, because they deliver the callback to whatever local application registered the scheme.

Every other client is rejected with a standard OAuth invalid_client error telling the user to contact their administrator; the response does not reveal the allowed domains. Registration itself still succeeds — it happens on the Forest server — the client just cannot use it against your MCP server. Access tokens issued before you enabled the option stay valid until they expire (1 hour at most); refreshes are blocked immediately.

Native desktop clients (Claude Desktop, MCP Inspector, …) register localhost redirect URIs, so they are always rejected when the allowlist is set. There is deliberately no loopback exemption: allowing localhost would allow every local application. Omit the option in environments that need native clients (e.g. development).

Token lifetimes

The MCP server issues OAuth tokens whose lifetimes come from Forest: 1 hour (3600s) for an access token, 8 days (691200s) for a refresh token. Forest re-grants those 8 days on every refresh, so without refreshTokenSeconds an assistant that keeps working is never asked to sign in again. You can shorten them with tokenTtl, to reduce how long a leaked token stays usable and to force users to log in again periodically.

Mounted on agent

agent.mountAiMcpServer({
  tokenTtl: {
    accessTokenSeconds: 900,
    refreshTokenSeconds: 86400,
  },
});

The two settings differ in what your users notice:

Setting	Forest default	What it bounds	Effect on the user
accessTokenSeconds	1 hour	How long an issued access token drives the MCP server	None — the AI assistant silently obtains a new one
refreshTokenSeconds	unbounded	The time between two interactive logins	Once it elapses, the user logs in through the browser again

refreshTokenSeconds is measured from the login itself, not from the last refresh, so an assistant that keeps working cannot keep extending its own session. Refresh tokens issued before you enabled the option carry no login timestamp, so their window is measured from their last refresh instead — one longer session each, then bounded.

Both values are upper bounds: they can only shorten what Forest granted, never extend it. For accessTokenSeconds, a value above Forest’s own token lifetime has no effect. refreshTokenSeconds bounds the whole session, which Forest otherwise re-extends on every refresh, so any value shortens it however large it is.

accessTokenSeconds bounds what a leaked token can do through the MCP server — its scopes stop applying and its calls stop being audited. It does not shorten the Forest token carried inside that JWT, which is signed rather than encrypted: treat a leak as a Forest token leak and revoke at the source.

The minimum for either value is 60 seconds; a lower value is raised to it. An invalid value (zero, negative or fractional) stops the server at startup rather than silently leaving your tokens uncapped.

Connect your AI assistant

Your MCP endpoint is available at /mcp (<your-agent-url>/mcp when mounted, <your-standalone-server-url>/mcp when standalone). On first connection, a browser window opens for you to log in with your Forest credentials; the assistant then operates with that user’s permissions.

Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http forest-admin <your-mcp-endpoint>

Use the MCP transport type "http" (not "sse" or "url"): the Forest MCP server uses Streamable HTTP. Your URL should still use https://. Clients that rely on mcp-remote (Claude Desktop, Windsurf, JetBrains) require Node.js 18+ (some versions need 20+).

Use cases

AI-assisted operations

Use Claude or other AI assistants to:

• Answer questions about your data
• Generate reports and insights
• Automate routine tasks
• Perform data analysis

Example prompts

“Show me all pending orders from the last 24 hours”

“What customers have the highest lifetime value?”

“Execute the ‘Send Invoice’ action on order #12345”

Security

The Forest MCP server:

• Respects all Forest permissions and roles
• Uses your environment’s authentication
• Logs all operations for audit purposes
• Never exposes sensitive data without proper access
• Lets you restrict which AI client applications can connect (see Restrict which AI clients can connect)
• Lets you shorten the OAuth token lifetimes (see Token lifetimes)

Only provide MCP server access to trusted AI tools and users. The server can perform any operation that the authenticated user can perform.