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Hello Sitecorian Community! 👋

Blog 2 gave me the working mental model for MCP. Now it was time to point that knowledge at something real: a live Sitecore XP instance, from inside VSCode, through GitHub Copilot.

While exploring what the community had already built, I came across an excellent guide from the Flux Digital team:

📄 Setting Up Sitecore MCP Server with XP + VSCode & CoPilot — Flux Digital

This is based on Anton Tishchenko’s open-source Sitecore MCP server:
📦 github.com/Antonytm/mcp-sitecore-server (released May 2025)

I’m going to walk through the full setup here with additional context from my own experience along the way.

What this server gives you access to

Once connected, your IDE can interact with a running Sitecore XP instance for:

Content item operations — read, create, and update items
User, domain, and role management
Search index control — rebuild, status checks
Databases, caches, and log access

The full architecture of this setup

*Full architecture of the Sitecore MCP setup. VSCode reads the mcp.json config to launch the server process via NPX, which then authenticates and queries the local Sitecore XP instance*

Prerequisites

Sitecore XP 10.x installed locally (the Flux Digital guide uses 10.4)
Node.js and NPX installed on your machine
GraphQL configured on your Sitecore instance with the Item API enabled
VSCode with the GitHub Copilot extension

Step-by-step setup

Create your MCP configuration fileIn a .vscode folder at the root of your Sitecore project, create a new file named mcp.json:

{
  "servers": {
    "Sitecore Local": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["@antonytm/mcp-sitecore-server@latest"],
      "env": {
        "TRANSPORT": "stdio",
        "GRAPHQL_ENDPOINT": "https://<your-sc-hostname>/sitecore/api/edge/graphql",
        "GRAPHQL_SCHEMAS": "edge,master,core",
        "GRAPHQL_API_KEY": "{YOUR-API-KEY-GUID-HERE}",
        "ITEM_SERVICE_SERVER_URL": "https://<your-sc-hostname>",
        "ITEM_SERVICE_DOMAIN": "sitecore",
        "ITEM_SERVICE_USERNAME": "admin",
        "ITEM_SERVICE_PASSWORD": "yourpassword"
      }
    }
  }
}

Update every value to match your local Sitecore instance — hostname, API key, and credentials.

2. Start the MCP server

Open the mcp.json file in VSCode. A

Start

button appears inline at the top of the file — click it. VSCode launches the server as a background process via NPX, downloading the package on the first run. Monitor the output in the VSCode

Output

panel to confirm it started cleanly.

3. Switch Copilot to Agent mode and verify the connection

Open GitHub Copilot in VSCode and switch to

Agent

mode. Click the

tool icon

at the bottom of the Copilot panel. Scroll through the list — your Sitecore Local server should appear with its tools registered beneath it. If it doesn’t show up, restart VSCode, reopen Copilot, and click the tool icon again.

4. Test the connection

Type the following prompt in Copilot agent mode:

Test Sitecore MCP connection works by bringing back the default home item from Sitecore

Copilot will ask permission before running — click

Continue

If the connection is working, you’ll see your Sitecore Home item data come back directly inside the Copilot response. That moment is genuinely satisfying.

Alternative: clone and run via NPM instead of NPX

If you prefer not to rely on NPX fetching the package on demand, you can clone and run the server directly:

git clone https://github.com/Antonytm/mcp-sitecore-server.git
cd mcp-sitecore-server
npm install
npm run build
npm start

Solving common issues

Too many tools error (on a free Copilot account)

Go to the tool icon in Copilot and deselect the default built-in tools, leaving only the Sitecore MCP Server tools active. Free tier accounts have a tool limit per request.

TLS / connection error connecting to local Sitecore

Add the following to the env section of your mcp.json:

"NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED": "0"

⚠️ Important: Only use NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED: "0" for local development instances. Never use this setting for remote or production servers.

Item API not responding

Your local Sitecore instance may need a config patch to allow HTTP access for the Item Service. You need to set Sitecore.Services.AllowToLoginWithHttp to true and configure the appropriate security policy. The full config patch XML is in the Flux Digital guide.

What this stage proved

By the end of this setup, I had GitHub Copilot in my IDE talking directly to a local Sitecore XP instance — browsing items, querying content, checking data — all through natural language prompts. No Content Editor. No manual navigation. Just a prompt and a result.

It worked well. But I noticed that Anton’s server was a general-purpose Sitecore administration tool. What I actually wanted was something more focused — tools shaped around my specific daily reporting needs on a real project. That is what Blog 4 is about.

Till then, Happy Sitecoring! 😊