Pinecone Developer (Vector Database) MCP server

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

Installation Requirements

To use the Pinecone Developer MCP Server, you'll need:

1. A Pinecone API key (generate one from the Pinecone console)
2. Node.js installed on your system with node and npx available in your PATH

Configuring with AI Assistants

Setting Up with Cursor

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>"
      }
    }
  }
}

3. Verify the server status in Cursor Settings > MCP
4. For global enablement, add the same configuration to .cursor/mcp.json in your home directory

Setting Up with Claude Desktop

1. Navigate to Settings > Developer > Edit Config to locate the claude_desktop_config.json file
2. Add the following configuration:

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

3. Restart Claude desktop
4. Look for the hammer (MCP) icon on the new chat screen, indicating available MCP tools

Setting Up with Gemini CLI

1. Install the extension:

gemini extensions install https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli

2. Set your Pinecone API key as an environment variable:

export PINECONE_API_KEY=<your pinecone api key>

3. Run gemini and press ctrl+t to verify "pinecone" appears in your list of MCP servers

Using the MCP Server

Once configured, AI tools will automatically use the MCP to interact with Pinecone. You may need to grant permission for tool usage when prompted.

Available Tools

The Pinecone Developer MCP Server provides these capabilities:

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

Example Interactions

Try asking your AI assistant to:

• "Set up a new Pinecone index for my question answering application"
• "Upload these sample records to my Pinecone index"
• "Search for documents about vector databases in my index"
• "Show me the configuration of my current indexes"

Limitations

Currently, only indexes with integrated inference are supported. The server does not support:

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

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