Kafka Sentinel MCP Server

Give AI agents safe, read-only eyes on your Kafka clusters. An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that exposes Kafka cluster health, consumer lag, partition state, and replay-readiness as structured tools - so LLM agents (Claude, or any MCP client) can diagnose streaming incidents without ever being able to break anything. Its 8 documented tools cluster into read & search, cluster, consumer, topic.

People connecting DevOps & monitoring tools to Claude, Cursor, VS Code, or another MCP client. The project is written in Python.

VERIFIED ACTIVE

LAST COMMIT 2026-07-31 · ★ 3 · #49 OF 101 MAINTAINED DEVOPS & MONITORING · VERIFIED 2026-08-25

MIT · Python servers · how we verify → /methodology

01 · Install Kafka Sentinel

before you install - you'll need

KAFKA_BOOTSTRAP

Environment variables documented in the project's README - it lists which are required and which have defaults.

Claude Code

claude mcp add sanjay-amu-kafka-sentinel-mcp -- uvx kafka-sentinel-mcp

Claude Desktop / Cursor / VS Code - add to config

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "sanjay-amu-kafka-sentinel-mcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "kafka-sentinel-mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Same JSON for Cursor. For VS Code, rename the top-level key from `mcpServers` to `servers`.

Using another client? Same JSON, different key

Claude Desktop · mcpServers

Cursor · mcpServers

VS Code · servers

Windsurf · mcpServers

Zed · context_servers

Cline · mcpServers

Roo Code · mcpServers

Continue · mcpServers

LibreChat · mcpServers

Gemini CLI · mcpServers

Codex CLI · mcp_servers

Full setup guides: every client.

02 · Evidence

Security posture

What to check before giving this server access to your agent - from the registry, GitHub, and our own probes. We don't score safety; we show what's verifiable.

runs as local process (stdio) - runs on your machine with your user's permissions

repo age created 2026-07-20 - young repo, little track record yet

license MIT - declared in the repository

pypi package kafka-sentinel-mcp - check the name against the project README before installing (PyPI has no namespace ownership)

registry namespace io.github.sanjay-amu is GitHub-verified and matches the repo owner

03 · What Kafka Sentinel can do

Prose above is summarized from the project's README and registry record - no invented capabilities.

What you can build

An agent gets 8 documented tools across read & search, cluster, consumer, including list_topics, list_consumer_groups, cluster_health, consumer_lag.

Capability map

Tools grouped from the project's README - what Kafka Sentinel lets an agent do.

read & search

2 tools - e.g. All non-internal topics with partition count and replication factor - start here if you don't know a topic name; All consumer group IDs with state - start here if you don't know a group name

list_topics · list_consumer_groups

Cluster

1 tool - e.g. Broker count, controller status, under-replicated / offline partition counts

cluster_health

Consumer

1 tool - e.g. Per-group, per-topic, per-partition lag with committed vs end offsets

consumer_lag

Topic

1 tool - e.g. Replication factor, min.insync.replicas, retention, and flags configs that violate durability best practice

topic_audit

Partition

1 tool - e.g. Leaders, ISR shrinkage, skew across brokers

partition_state

Replay

1 tool - e.g. For a group + topic: earliest available offsets vs committed, i.e., "can we still replay what we missed?"

replay_readiness

Incident

1 tool - e.g. One-call bundle of all the above, timestamped - designed for pasting into a postmortem

incident_snapshot

Latest releases

v0.1.5 · 2026-07-31

Fixes a genuine read-only violation. Looking up a single topic via list_topics(topic=...) issues a metadata request naming that topic, which creates it on any broker with auto.create.topics.enable=true - so a…

v0.1.4 · 2026-07-31

Fixes a broken install: mcp 2.0.0 removed mcp.server.fastmcp, so any fresh install of 0.1.3 failed at import. Dependency majors are now capped. Also pins the ruff rule set so CI is deterministic across ruff releases.

v0.1.3 · 2026-07-31

Structured permission_denied responses under Describe-only ACLs. Integration tests against a real Kafka broker via testcontainers, including verification that the observer never commits offsets. CITATION.cff for…

04 · Who maintains Kafka Sentinel

Kafka Sentinel is maintained by sanjay-amu. It's the only MCP server we track from this author; the repo dates to Jul 2026.

05 · Facts

repository: github.com/sanjay-amu/kafka-sentinel-mcp
category: DevOps & monitoring - ranked #49 of 101 actively-maintained DevOps & monitoring servers as of 2026-08-25.
release cadence: 6 releases in the last 90 days (latest 2026-07-31)
registry: io.github.sanjay-amu/kafka-sentinel-mcp (active, first published 2026-07-21 · 3 versions)
packages: pypi:kafka-sentinel-mcp

06 · Kafka Sentinel FAQ

Is Kafka Sentinel still maintained?

Yes - as of 2026-08-25, its last commit was 2026-07-31 and it shipped 6 releases in the last 90 days. We re-verify nightly.

What can Kafka Sentinel do?

An agent gets 8 documented tools across read & search, cluster, consumer, including list_topics, list_consumer_groups, cluster_health, consumer_lag.

How do I install Kafka Sentinel?

Run `uvx kafka-sentinel-mcp`. The README documents one environment variable (KAFKA_BOOTSTRAP) to set first. You can also paste the ready-made client config above.

Does Kafka Sentinel run locally?

Yes - it's a stdio server: it runs on your machine (via uvx) with your user's permissions. Your data stays local unless the server itself calls external APIs.

07 · Alternatives to Kafka Sentinel

Alternatives to Kafka Sentinel

Maintained DevOps & monitoring servers if Kafka Sentinel isn't the fit.

Pairs well with

Servers that cover what Kafka Sentinel doesn't - only shown when the pairing reason fits the companion.

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