Jenkins MCP Server Usage
CloudOps for Kubernetes installs the Jenkins MCP Server plugin by default. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) lets agentic tools, such as Cursor or Claude, connect to your Jenkins server to perform actions such as reading build information and triggering jobs on your behalf.
The Jenkins MCP Server plugin is included in release 3.7.2 and higher.
Overview
With the plugin installed, Jenkins exposes an MCP endpoint over Streamable HTTP. The Server-Sent Events (SSE) and stateless transports are disabled in CloudOps for Kubernetes.
An MCP client authenticates to your Jenkins server using a Jenkins API token. With that token, the agentic client will have access to perform whatever actions that Jenkins user is authorized to do.
An MCP client can do anything the underlying Jenkins user can do, so ensure that the Jenkins user has the least permission necessary. Suggested roles for the user are viewer or developer. Do not use an administrator user for this purpose. For more about Jenkins authorization configuration, and user roles, see Jenkins Authorization configuration.
Connecting a Client
Only client hosts allowed by TF_VAR_jenkins_allowed_cidr can reach the Jenkins server, so the host running your agentic tool must be within that allowed range.
The MCP Server plugin documentation includes details on creating a Jenkins API token for your user, and includes examples of configuring various MCP clients to use the Jenkins MCP server.