About the Novu MCP server
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard for connecting AI applications to external services. Once connected, you can prompt your AI assistant to:- Trigger workflows for specific subscribers
- Search and inspect subscriber data
- Update subscriber notification preferences
- Debug failed notifications and delivery issues
- Analyze notification activity and logs
- Create and manage workflows
- Create and update agents, then connect a channel
- List agent conversations and inspect activity timelines
Prerequisites
- A Novu Cloud account
- OAuth access, or a Novu Cloud API key
- An MCP-compatible AI tool - Cursor, Claude Code, ChatGPT, Claude Desktop, VS Code, Codex, or similar
Endpoints
Novu Cloud has one MCP endpoint per region:eu.dashboard.novu.co pairs with the EU endpoint, everything else uses US.
Connect your AI tool
Connecting with OAuth is recommended - you don’t copy or paste a key; your client signs you in and picks up your organization automatically. If your client doesn’t support OAuth, use a Novu Cloud API key instead.- Cursor
- VS Code
- Claude Code
- ChatGPT
- Claude Desktop
- Codex
- Other
API key (fallback)
Use a Novu Cloud API key for clients without OAuth support,mcp-remote / stdio setups, and autonomous agents. Copy your secret key from the Novu Dashboard and send it as a bearer token:
Environments
OAuth sessions are scoped to your organization and default to the Development environment. To act on a different environment (for example, Production), callget_environments and pass the environment’s _id as the optional environmentId parameter on any tool call.
API keys are already bound to one environment, so environmentId has no effect on API key sessions.
Switch an OAuth session to a specific environment
Example prompts
After connecting the Novu MCP server, copy or open these prompts in Cursor to verify the connection and perform common tasks.Verify connection
Test your Novu MCP connection
List your notification workflows
Subscriber management
Find a subscriber by email
Create a new subscriber
Trigger and debug
Trigger a workflow for a subscriber
Debug failed notifications
Agents and conversations
Create a managed agent and connect a channel
Debug an agent conversation
MCP tools
Your AI assistant discovers these tools automatically when it connects, and calls the right one based on your prompt.environmentId parameter - see Environments. Agent tools use the agent’s identifier (slug), not the Mongo _id. Conversation tools on this MCP server require Novu Cloud. Self-hosted Enterprise can still use Conversations in the dashboard and API, but not through mcp.novu.co.Use multiple MCP servers
You can connect both the Novu MCP server and the Novu documentation MCP server at the same time. Each serves a different purpose:Troubleshooting
OAuth sign-in loop or never connects
OAuth sign-in loop or never connects
Authorization header - presenting a credential skips OAuth entirely. Restart your AI assistant after changing the config.Wrong environment data
Wrong environment data
get_environments and pass the _id you want as environmentId.401 after previously working
401 after previously working
Empty results or authentication errors
Empty results or authentication errors
eu.dashboard.novu.co → https://eu.mcp.novu.co/), and that any API key is sent as Authorization: Bearer your-api-key with no extra spaces.Conversations return 404
Conversations return 404
get_conversations and get_conversation_activities on this MCP server require Novu Cloud with Conversations
enabled. They are not available through MCP on self-hosted deployments. Confirm you passed an agent
identifier (slug) as agentId, not a Mongo _id.Self-hosted Novu
Self-hosted Novu
https://mcp.novu.co/ and
https://eu.mcp.novu.co/ connect to Novu Cloud and do not accept a self-hosted API URL. Use the
Agent Toolkit with backendUrl set to your API, or call the REST API
directly. You can still use the Novu documentation MCP server to search these docs.Still not connecting
Still not connecting
claude mcp list. For Codex, run /mcp in the TUI. For Claude Desktop, confirm Node.js is installed.Security
- Prefer OAuth over long-lived API keys for interactive clients - OAuth tokens are short-lived and revocable.
- The server never puts credentials in URLs, and holds no ambient credentials between sessions.
- Rotate an API key from the Dashboard immediately if you suspect it’s been exposed.
- Use caution when combining the Novu MCP server with other MCP servers or untrusted data in the same session, and review tool calls before approving actions that modify your data.
Related topics
Agent Skills
Agent Toolkit
@novu/agent-toolkit package.