Clerk MCP Server: Tools, Setup and Security

The Clerk MCP server lets coding agents work with your Clerk account. It can create and configure applications, list and create users, check domain DNS and set up production instances. It also serves ready-made Clerk SDK snippets. Clerk hosts it at https://mcp.clerk.com/mcp.

Checked against: Clerk's MCP server docs and Claude's Clerk listing on 2 November 2026. eSEOspace did not install or test this server.

At a glance

What it can do

Clerk's docs split the tools into two groups.

Account tools:

• whoami shows the connected user, workspace and granted permissions.
• list_applications, get_application and create_application manage applications.
• get_instance_config, get_instance_config_schema, patch_instance_config and put_instance_config read or change instance settings, with a dry-run preview.
• list_users and create_user find and create users.
• list_domains, get_domain_status and check_domain_dns handle DNS records and verification.
• get_deploy_oauth_providers, create_production_instance and set_oauth_provider_credentials move an app to production.
• list_application_feedback, submit_feedback and get_more_tools handle feedback.

SDK snippet tools: clerk_sdk_snippet and list_clerk_sdk_snippets return code patterns and bundles such as b2b-saas or organizations.

Claude's listing showed only the two snippet tools on 2 November 2026, so the account tools may not appear in every client yet.

How to connect it

For Claude Code:

claude mcp add clerk --transport http https://mcp.clerk.com/mcp

Run /mcp, select clerk and choose Authenticate. Your browser opens so you can sign in, pick a workspace and approve the permissions.

For Codex:

codex mcp add clerk --url https://mcp.clerk.com/mcp

For claude.ai, go to Customize > Connectors, add a custom connector with the URL above, and keep "Use Claude's published identity" selected. On Team and Enterprise plans, an Owner must add it in Organization settings first.

For clients without OAuth support, such as Claude Desktop's config file, Windsurf or Zed, Clerk uses mcp-remote:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "clerk": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mcp-remote", "https://mcp.clerk.com/mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Clerk also documents Cursor, VS Code and Vercel's fx agent. Our MCP config generator can format other configs.

Security notes

Clerk's design limits several common risks:

1. Role-bound. The server "acts as you in the selected workspace," so it can only do what your workspace role allows.
2. No secret keys. Clerk says the server never returns secret keys, even when it creates an app or production instance. Copy keys from the Dashboard or use clerk env pull.
3. Confirmation. create_production_instance cannot be undone, so it requires confirm: true.

Watch the high-impact tools. put_instance_config replaces configuration, and set_oauth_provider_credentials changes how users sign in. Use dry runs and approval prompts.

On data sharing, Clerk says each tool asks your agent for a one-sentence context summary, which Clerk receives for product analytics with the tool name, success and your user ID. It does not send tool inputs or results. submit_feedback sends reports with credentials redacted.

To switch workspaces through mcp-remote, Clerk says to delete ~/.mcp-auth, which signs you out of every server using it. The MCP project's security best practices and our MCP OAuth misconfiguration guide cover more, as does the MCP Security Center.

Alternatives

• Auth0 MCP for Okta's identity platform.
• Supabase MCP server if you use Supabase Auth.
• Firebase MCP server for Firebase Authentication projects.

Next step

Connect Clerk and ask "Which Clerk applications do I have?" before letting the agent change any settings. For auth choices behind your own MCP server, see our best MCP auth providers list or the MCP server directory.

Frequently asked questions