AWS Documentation MCP server for AI agents

The AWS Documentation Model Context Protocol (MCP) server provides easy access to AWS documentation, enabling you to fetch pages, search for content, and get recommendations directly within your development environment. It acts as a bridge between your IDE and AWS's extensive documentation resources.

Installation

Prerequisites

Before installing the MCP server, ensure you have:

Installed uv from Astral
Python 3.10 or newer (you can install it with uv python install 3.10)

Setup

Configure the MCP server in your MCP client configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "awslabs.aws-documentation-mcp-server": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["awslabs.aws-documentation-mcp-server@latest"],
      "env": {
        "FASTMCP_LOG_LEVEL": "ERROR",
        "AWS_DOCUMENTATION_PARTITION": "aws",
        "MCP_USER_AGENT": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/131.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"
      },
      "disabled": false,
      "autoApprove": []
    }
  }
}

Windows Installation

For Windows users, use this configuration format instead:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "awslabs.aws-documentation-mcp-server": {
      "disabled": false,
      "timeout": 60,
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "uv",
      "args": [
        "tool",
        "run",
        "--from",
        "awslabs.aws-documentation-mcp-server@latest",
        "awslabs.aws-documentation-mcp-server.exe"
      ],
      "env": {
        "FASTMCP_LOG_LEVEL": "ERROR",
        "AWS_DOCUMENTATION_PARTITION": "aws"
      }
    }
  }
}

Amazon Q Developer CLI Integration

To use with the Amazon Q Developer CLI, add the configuration to ~/.aws/amazonq/cli-agents/default.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "awslabs.aws-documentation-mcp-server": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["awslabs.aws-documentation-mcp-server@latest"],
      "env": {
        "FASTMCP_LOG_LEVEL": "ERROR",
        "AWS_DOCUMENTATION_PARTITION": "aws"
      },
      "disabled": false,
      "autoApprove": []
    }
  },
  "tools": [
    "@awslabs.aws-documentation-mcp-server"
  ],
}

Docker Installation

If you prefer using Docker, build the image first with docker build -t mcp/aws-documentation ., then configure:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "awslabs.aws-documentation-mcp-server": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "--rm",
        "--interactive",
        "--env",
        "FASTMCP_LOG_LEVEL=ERROR",
        "--env",
        "AWS_DOCUMENTATION_PARTITION=aws",
        "mcp/aws-documentation:latest"
      ],
      "env": {},
      "disabled": false,
      "autoApprove": []
    }
  }
}

Configuration Options

Environment Variables

You can customize the server behavior with these environment variables:

Variable	Description	Default
`FASTMCP_LOG_LEVEL`	Logging level (DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR, CRITICAL)	`WARNING`
`AWS_DOCUMENTATION_PARTITION`	AWS partition (`aws` or `aws-cn`)	`aws`
`MCP_USER_AGENT`	Custom User-Agent string for HTTP requests	Chrome-based default

Corporate Network Support

If you're behind a corporate proxy or firewall that blocks certain User-Agent strings, set a custom User-Agent:

{
  "env": {
    "MCP_USER_AGENT": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/131.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"
  }
}

Using the MCP Server

Once configured, you can interact with AWS documentation through the following tools:

Read Documentation

Fetches an AWS documentation page and converts it to markdown format:

read_documentation(url: str) -> str

Example query: "look up documentation on S3 bucket naming rules."

Search Documentation (Global AWS Only)

Searches AWS documentation using the official AWS Documentation Search API:

search_documentation(search_phrase: str, limit: int) -> list[dict]

Example query: "search for information about ECS task definitions."

Get Recommendations (Global AWS Only)

Gets content recommendations for a specific AWS documentation page:

recommend(url: str) -> list[dict]

Example query: "recommend content for page https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/bucketnamingrules.html"

Get Available Services (China AWS Only)

Retrieves a list of available AWS services in China regions:

get_available_services() -> str

Example query: "what AWS services are available in China regions?"

How to install this MCP server

For Claude Code

To add this MCP server to Claude Code, run this command in your terminal:

claude mcp add-json "awslabs-aws-documentation-mcp-server" '{"command":"uvx","args":["awslabs.aws-documentation-mcp-server@latest"],"env":{"FASTMCP_LOG_LEVEL":"ERROR","AWS_DOCUMENTATION_PARTITION":"aws"},"disabled":false,"autoApprove":[]}'

See the official Claude Code MCP documentation for more details.

For Cursor

There are two ways to add an MCP server to Cursor. The most common way is to add the server globally in the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file so that it is available in all of your projects.

If you only need the server in a single project, you can add it to the project instead by creating or adding it to the .cursor/mcp.json file.

Adding an MCP server to Cursor globally

To add a global MCP server go to Cursor Settings > Tools & Integrations and click "New MCP Server".

When you click that button the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file will be opened and you can add your server like this:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "awslabs.aws-documentation-mcp-server": {
            "command": "uvx",
            "args": [
                "awslabs.aws-documentation-mcp-server@latest"
            ],
            "env": {
                "FASTMCP_LOG_LEVEL": "ERROR",
                "AWS_DOCUMENTATION_PARTITION": "aws"
            },
            "disabled": false,
            "autoApprove": []
        }
    }
}

Adding an MCP server to a project

To add an MCP server to a project you can create a new .cursor/mcp.json file or add it to the existing one. This will look exactly the same as the global MCP server example above.

How to use the MCP server

Once the server is installed, you might need to head back to Settings > MCP and click the refresh button.

The Cursor agent will then be able to see the available tools the added MCP server has available and will call them when it needs to.

You can also explicitly ask the agent to use the tool by mentioning the tool name and describing what the function does.

For Claude Desktop

To add this MCP server to Claude Desktop:

1. Find your configuration file:

macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
Linux: ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

2. Add this to your configuration file:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "awslabs.aws-documentation-mcp-server": {
            "command": "uvx",
            "args": [
                "awslabs.aws-documentation-mcp-server@latest"
            ],
            "env": {
                "FASTMCP_LOG_LEVEL": "ERROR",
                "AWS_DOCUMENTATION_PARTITION": "aws"
            },
            "disabled": false,
            "autoApprove": []
        }
    }
}

3. Restart Claude Desktop for the changes to take effect