Opalstack MCP: vibe-deploy your next project!

sean

We've recently launched a MCP (Model Context Protocol) endpoint for our control panel API! This means that you can now connect your MCP-enabled editor to the control panel and let AI agents work with your Opalstack account.

Details and demo videos are available in our blog post "Vibe deploy your next app: Introducing Opalstack’s Model‑Context‑Powered Future" but since we're talking AI stuff here's an AI-generated summary 🤖:

Opalstack has integrated the Model Context Protocol (MCP) into their hosting platform, enabling "vibe deploy" - natural language deployment of applications.

Key Features:

Natural-language deployment: Conversational agents can now request "create a new WordPress site named blog on my domain" or "add a Django app and set up a PostgreSQL database" without cURL commands or copy-pasting tokens

Seamless IDE integration designed to work with agentic workflows in editors like VS Code

21 purpose-built MCP tools that wrap around their JSON REST API, covering everything from applications and databases to DNS and SSL certificates

Technical Implementation:

MCP endpoint serves as a wrapper around existing API operations while publishing a catalogue of tools to any MCP-compatible AI agent

Works with VS Code and GitHub Copilot for AI-assisted deployment workflows

Maintains security through existing token-based authentication

Philosophy: Developers shouldn't need Docker or Kubernetes to run small projects - focus on code while Opalstack handles hosting infrastructure

The feature allows developers to deploy and manage applications using conversational AI rather than traditional command-line interfaces or manual configuration.

Once you have this configured you can boss your editor's AI agent around with tasks like...

"Create a new PHP app on opal3 and deploy the current project into it."
"Make a copy of my app 'foo' as 'staging-foo'."
"Give me a list of my email addresses with their related mailboxes and forwards."
"How much storage am I using on opal12?"

... or just about anything else you can think to do with our API!

Opalstack MCP and VSCode

The blog post and videos cover how to get started with Opalstack MCP in VS Code with the Copilot extension but the short version is install the extension and configure it with your Opalstack API token like so, replacing "ABC123" with your token:

{
  "servers": {
    "opalstack": {
      "url": "https://my.opalstack.com/mcp",
      "type": "https",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer ABC123"
      }
    }
  },
}

Opalstack MCP and Cursor

The configuration is slightly different for Cursor - instead you'll need to configure your mcp.json like so:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "opalstack": {
      "url": "https://my.opalstack.com/mcp",
      "type": "https",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer ABC123"
      }
    }
  }
}

Opalstack MCP and Claude Code

You can configure Claude Code to use Opalstack MCP by running the following command in your local terminal:

claude mcp add --transport http opalstack https://my.opalstack.com/mcp --header "Authorization: Bearer ABC123"

Opalstack MCP and Zed

Our last example is for Zed. At this time, Zed doesn't support HTTP MCP servers directly so instead you'll need to use mcp-remote as a proxy, run via npx and configured in your Zed settings.json like so:

  "context_servers": {
    "opalstack": {
      "source": "custom",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "mcp-remote",
        "https://my.opalstack.com/mcp",
        "--header",
        "Authorization: Bearer ABC123"
      ],
      "env": {}
    }
  }

No matter what task or which tool, Opalstack's MCP endpoint is ready for you!

webtweakers

I noticed the blog post and this seemed very interesting (as I'm near publishing a new project). So I dabbled a bit with it, using PyCharm. But their configuration is different and I couldn't get it working. Unfortunately.

Do you happen to have a configuration solution for PyCharm as well?

sean

webtweakers after reading https://www.jetbrains.com/help/pycharm/ai.html and https://www.jetbrains.com/help/pycharm/mcp-server.html, as far as I can tell PyCharm cannot act as a MCP client that connects to other MCP servers. Instead it runs its own MCP server that lets MCP clients control PyCharm.

For example, you would add both Opalstack MCP and PyCharm MCP (the servers) in Claude Code (the client), then use Claude to drive PyCharm.

webtweakers

There is that, but there is also this: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/mcp.html
And that suggests PyCharm is also able to act as a client.

But their config misses the seemingly vital "url" param:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "yourServerName": {
            "command": "path-or-command-to-start-server",
            "args": [
                "optional-arguments-passed-to-server"
            ]
        }
    }
}

sean

webtweakers huh, not sure how I missed that!

Like in the Zed example above, PyCharm doesn't currently support a URL parameter so you must instead use mcp-proxy. Probably something like this should work:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "opalstack": {
          "command": "npx",
          "args": [
            "-y",
            "mcp-remote",
            "https://my.opalstack.com/mcp",
            "--header",
            "Authorization: Bearer ABC123"
          ],
       }
    }
}

You'll need a recent version of npm (with npx) installed for this to work.