Pinecone Developer (Vector Database) MCP server

The Pinecone Developer MCP Server implements the Model Context Protocol (MCP) standard, allowing coding assistants and AI tools to interact directly with Pinecone. This enables your AI tools to search Pinecone documentation, help configure indexes, generate informed code, and test queries directly within your development environment.

Installation Requirements

The MCP server requires Node.js to be installed on your system. Make sure both node and npx are available in your PATH before proceeding with the setup.

API Key Generation

To access your Pinecone project through the MCP server:

1. Generate an API key using the Pinecone console
2. Without an API key, your AI tool can still search documentation but cannot manage or query indexes

Configuring AI Assistants

Setting Up Cursor

To add the Pinecone MCP server to a Cursor project:

1. Create a .cursor/mcp.json file in your project root
2. Add the following configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pinecone": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y", "@pinecone-database/mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "PINECONE_API_KEY": "<your pinecone api key>"
      }
    }
  }
}

You can verify the server status in Cursor Settings > MCP.

For global enablement, add this configuration to the .cursor/mcp.json file in your home directory instead.

Setting Up Claude Desktop

To configure Claude desktop:

1. Open Claude desktop and navigate to Settings > Developer > Edit Config
2. Add the following configuration to the claude_desktop_config.json file:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pinecone": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y", "@pinecone-database/mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "PINECONE_API_KEY": "<your pinecone api key>"
      }
    }
  }
}

3. Restart Claude desktop
4. In a new chat, you should see a hammer (MCP) icon indicating the MCP tools are available

Using the MCP Server

Once configured, your AI tool will automatically use the MCP server to interact with Pinecone. You may receive permission prompts before a tool can be used.

Try asking your AI assistant to:

• Set up an example index
• Upload sample data
• Search for specific information

Available Tools

The Pinecone Developer MCP Server provides these tools:

• search-docs: Search Pinecone's official documentation
• list-indexes: View all your Pinecone indexes
• describe-index: Get configuration details for a specific index
• describe-index-stats: View statistics about index data, including record count and available namespaces
• create-index-for-model: Create a new index with an integrated inference model for text embedding
• upsert-records: Insert or update records in an index with integrated inference
• search-records: Search for records using a text query with integrated inference embedding
• cascading-search: Search across multiple indexes with deduplication and reranking
• rerank-documents: Rerank records or text documents using a specialized reranking model

Limitations

The MCP server currently supports only indexes with integrated inference. The following features are not supported:

• Assistants
• Indexes without integrated inference
• Standalone embeddings
• Direct vector search

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 "pinecone" '{"command":"npx","args":["-y","@pinecone-database/mcp"],"env":{"PINECONE_API_KEY":"<your pinecone api key>"}}'

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": {
        "pinecone": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "-y",
                "@pinecone-database/mcp"
            ],
            "env": {
                "PINECONE_API_KEY": "<your pinecone api key>"
            }
        }
    }
}

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": {
        "pinecone": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "-y",
                "@pinecone-database/mcp"
            ],
            "env": {
                "PINECONE_API_KEY": "<your pinecone api key>"
            }
        }
    }
}

3. Restart Claude Desktop for the changes to take effect