Grafana Tempo MCP Server

Add to your client

Copy the config for your MCP client and paste it into its config file.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "grafana-tempo-mcp-server": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "-i",
        "--rm",
        "-e",
        "TEMPO_URL",
        "grafana/tempo-mcp-server"
      ],
      "env": {
        "TEMPO_URL": "<your-tempo-query-endpoint>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Before you start

• A running Grafana Tempo instance reachable at TEMPO_URL (defaults to http://localhost:3200)
• Go 1.21+ to build from source, or Docker / Docker Compose to run it
• No credential required by the server itself; optional basic-auth or bearer token if your Tempo endpoint is protected
• An MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, etc.) configured to launch the server over stdio

About Grafana Tempo MCP Server

Tools & capabilities (1)

When to use it

• Use it when you want an agent to fetch traces by service, e.g. {service.name="frontend"}
• Use it when filtering traces by latency, e.g. {duration>1s}, to find slow requests
• Use it when isolating error traces, e.g. {http.status_code=500}
• Use it when you want trace lookups in chat without opening the Grafana/Tempo UI
• Use it as a reference for wiring stdio or HTTP/SSE MCP transport to a Tempo backend

Quick setup

1. 1Note this repo is archived — prefer Tempo's embedded MCP server for new setups
2. 2Build with Go 1.21+ or pull/run the Docker image
3. 3Set TEMPO_URL to your Tempo endpoint (default http://localhost:3200)
4. 4Choose a transport: stdio for MCP clients, or HTTP/SSE (default port 8080, override with SSE_PORT)
5. 5Add the server to your MCP client config and restart the client
6. 6Verify by asking the agent to run a tempo_query like {service.name="frontend"}

Grafana Tempo MCP Server FAQ