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Private beta: AI SRE is currently in private beta and available to invited accounts only. To join the whitelist test, contact the Flashduty sales team to request access; features and the UI may change during the beta.

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Overview

MCP (Model Context Protocol) lets AI SRE agents connect to external tools and data sources. Each MCP server is a standardized endpoint that exposes a set of tools (functions) — for example, querying GitHub issues, sending Slack messages, reading Kubernetes resources, or retrieving metrics from an observability platform. Once you configure and enable an MCP server in the console, agents will autonomously decide when they need an external capability during incident investigation and call the corresponding tool directly — no manual data-shuttling required.
This page covers the “MCP” section inside the AI SRE console — that is, third-party MCP servers that agents call (you bring external tools in for agents to use).This is different from the Flashduty MCP Server in the developer docs: that is Flashduty’s own outbound MCP service, which lets you connect Flashduty’s capabilities into third-party AI clients (such as Claude or Cursor). One direction is “agents calling external services”; the other is “external clients calling Flashduty” — they are opposite flows, not the same thing.

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What Is MCP

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open protocol that describes in a uniform way “what tools a server exposes, what parameters each tool accepts, and what it returns.” Think of it as the “USB port” of the AI agent world — any MCP-compliant server can be discovered and called plug-and-play by an agent, with no per-system adapter code required. In AI SRE, MCP extends an agent’s capability from “built-in tools” to “any external system”:
  • You add an MCP server in the console (declaring its endpoint, transport, and authentication).
  • At session start, enabled servers visible in the current scope become available to the agent.
  • When needed, the agent discovers the tools that server provides and calls them directly.
MCP vs. Skills: MCP provides the ability to connect external tools; a Skill provides the methodology for orchestrating those tools to accomplish a class of tasks. A Skill can declare which MCP server tool it needs inside SKILL.md using mcp:server/tool notation. See Skills for details.

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Adding an MCP Server

Go to Plugins → MCP, click Add Server in the top-right corner, and fill in the form to define an MCP server.

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Basic Fields

Each MCP server also has an AI description: after an agent first lists a server’s tools, the system automatically generates a capability summary from the tool list and displays it in the console. This summary refreshes automatically as the tool set changes — no manual maintenance needed.

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Transport

stdio is only available for BYOC environments (Runner deployed on your own machine). Cloud Sandboxes cannot launch local subprocesses. If you are using a cloud environment, use HTTP Streaming or SSE instead, and ensure the MCP server is reachable from the Sandbox network. For differences between environments, see Environments (BYOC).
There is a default timeout for both connection and tool calls: 10 seconds for connection, 60 seconds for tool invocation.

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Authentication

MCP servers support three authentication modes that determine how credentials are provided to the server:
All users share the same credentials. Credentials are written directly into the server configuration — for HTTP/SSE transport, in the Headers (JSON) (e.g., { "Authorization": "Bearer xxx" }); for stdio transport, in the environment variables (JSON) (e.g., { "API_KEY": "xxx" }). Suitable for internal systems accessed with account-level service tokens.
For “Per-User API Key” and “Per-User OAuth”, if credentials are missing the agent’s tool call is paused and a credential entry or authorization dialog is shown to the current user; execution resumes once credentials are supplied. In Shared mode, no credentials are requested from the user.

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Management & Inspection

The MCP list displays each server’s name (including its AI description; built-in servers are labeled with a “Built-in” badge), scope (account or team name), transport, an enabled toggle, and an actions column. The scope filter bar at the top lets you switch between All / Account / Team views.
Toggle the switch in the list. Only enabled servers are available to the agent; disabled servers are invisible to agents and cannot be called. Built-in servers are always enabled and their toggles cannot be changed.
Click the edit button (or click the row) to open the form. You can modify the name, transport, description, endpoint/command, authentication mode, and scope. If you do not have edit permission, the form opens in read-only mode with an explanation; built-in servers are likewise read-only.
Removes the MCP server from the current scope. Agents that depend on it will no longer be able to access its tools, and active sessions currently using it will fail. A confirmation prompt is shown before deletion.

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Inspection: Viewing the Tools a Server Exposes

The tools an MCP server exposes are discovered during a session by agents on demand — not displayed statically in the console. This is because the same MCP server may have different reachability and tool sets across different environments (Runners); connection state and tool count are per-environment properties, not global ones.
To confirm which tools a given MCP server actually exposes in a particular environment, the most direct way is to ask the agent in Chat to list that server’s tools — it will show the tools and how to use each one. See Conversations.
Every account comes pre-configured with a built-in Flashduty MCP server (labeled “Built-in” in the list, read-only, always enabled), which lets agents read Flashduty incidents, alerts, and other data directly. It is maintained by the platform and requires no configuration on your part.

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Scope

MCP shares the same two-level scope model as other resources (Skills, Knowledge Packs, Agents, Environments), divided into account level and team level: Edit permissions: Account owners or account admins can edit any MCP server; team members can edit team-level MCP servers that belong to their team. There is no creator-retains-rights exception. When you lack edit permission, the toggle and action buttons for that row appear as read-only. Runtime visibility: At session start, the agent is offered only account-level MCP servers and servers belonging to the team bound to the current session. Once the agent reads a team’s knowledge during an investigation, that team’s MCP servers and Skills are mounted into the session on demand. The account is the only security boundary at runtime; the team is an ownership and editing tag only.

Skills

Skills call MCP-provided tools inside SKILL.md using the mcp:server/tool notation.

Agent

Agents share the same authentication modes and scope model as MCP.

BYOC

stdio MCP servers must run on a BYOC Runner; learn the difference between cloud Sandbox and self-hosted environments.

Console

Observe how agents inspect and invoke MCP tools during a session.

Flashduty MCP Server (Developer)

The opposite direction: the official MCP service for connecting Flashduty into third-party AI clients.