PagerDuty MCP Server

A server that exposes PagerDuty API functionality to LLMs. This server is designed to be used programmatically, with structured inputs and outputs.

Overview

The PagerDuty MCP Server provides a set of tools for interacting with the PagerDuty API. These tools are designed to be used by LLMs to perform various operations on PagerDuty resources such as incidents, services, teams, and users.

Getting Started

1. Initialize your local Python environment:

cd pagerduty-mcp-server
brew install uv
uv sync

2. Configure authentication (see Authentication below).

Authentication

Priority: `X-PagerDuty-Token` HTTP header > `PAGERDUTY_API_TOKEN` environment variable > OAuth 2.0 PKCE

Option 1: X-PagerDuty-Token Header (Platform Integration)

When running as part of a platform that injects per-request credentials, the server reads the `X-PagerDuty-Token` HTTP header. This takes highest priority and does not require any local configuration.

Option 2: API Token (Recommended for Most Users)

Set the `PAGERDUTY_API_TOKEN` environment variable, or add it to a `.env` file in the project root. The server will automatically load environment variables from the `.env` file if present.

Environment variable:

export PAGERDUTY_API_TOKEN=your_api_token_here

`.env` file (recommended):

echo "PAGERDUTY_API_TOKEN=your_api_token_here" > .env

Option 3: OAuth 2.0 PKCE (Local Interactive Use)

OAuth is available for local standalone usage. It opens a browser for authentication and stores tokens securely in the OS keyring. OAuth is opt-in — it only activates when `PAGERDUTY_CLIENT_ID` is set and no API token is present.

Setup:

1. Register a PagerDuty OAuth application at Integrations → Developer Tools → My Apps.

2. Set the required scope to `read write`.

3. Set the redirect URI to `http://localhost:5173/oauth/pagerduty` (default port).

4. Set the `PAGERDUTY_CLIENT_ID` environment variable to your application's client ID.

Optional configuration:

• Set `PAGERDUTY_CLIENT_SECRET` to enable token refresh (confidential client).
• Set `PAGERDUTY_OAUTH_CALLBACK_PORT` to override the default callback port (`5173`).

Usage

Claude/Cursor

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pagerduty-mcp-server": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["pagerduty-mcp-server"],
      "env": {
          "PAGERDUTY_API_TOKEN": ""
      }
    }
  }
}

As Standalone Server

uv run pagerduty-mcp-server

Available Tools

Read Tools

• `get_escalation_policies` — List or get details for escalation policies
• `get_incidents` — List or get details for incidents (supports filtering by status, urgency, service, team, and time range)
• `get_oncalls` — List on-call entries for a time range
• `get_schedules` — List or get details for schedules
• `get_services` — List or get details for services
• `get_teams` — List or get details for teams
• `get_users` — List or get details for users
• `list_users_oncall` — List users on call for a specific schedule
• `build_user_context` — Build a context object for the current authenticated user

Write Tools

• `acknowledge_incident` — Acknowledge an incident (signals active investigation)
• `resolve_incident` — Resolve an incident (stops further escalations)
• `add_incident_note` — Add a note to an incident (for recording investigation progress or context)

The `include` Parameter

Most read tools accept an optional `include` parameter — a list of field names to return. When specified, only those fields are included in each response object, which reduces token usage in LLM contexts.

# Return only id, title, and status for each incident
get_incidents(include=["id", "title", "status"])

# Return only id and name for each service
get_services(include=["id", "name"])

See the tool documentation for the full list of available fields per tool.

Response Format

All API responses follow a consistent format:

{
  "metadata": {
    "count": "",
    "description": ""
  },
  "": [
    {
      "...": "..."
    }
  ],
  "error": {
    "message": "",
    "code": ""
  }
}

The `error` field is only present when an error occurs. Resource names in responses are always pluralized for consistency, even when a single item is returned.

Error Handling

When an error occurs, the response will include an error object with the following structure:

{
  "metadata": {
    "count": 0,
    "description": "Error occurred while processing request"
  },
  "error": {
    "message": "Invalid user ID provided",
    "code": "INVALID_USER_ID"
  }
}

Common error scenarios include:

• Invalid resource IDs (e.g., user_id, team_id, service_id)
• Missing required parameters
• Invalid parameter values
• API request failures
• Response processing errors

Parameter Validation

• All ID parameters must be valid PagerDuty resource IDs
• Date parameters must be valid ISO8601 timestamps
• List parameters (e.g., `statuses`, `team_ids`) must contain valid values
• Invalid values in list parameters will be ignored
• Required parameters cannot be `None` or empty strings
• For `statuses` in `get_incidents`, only `triggered`, `acknowledged`, and `resolved` are valid values
• For `urgency` in incidents, only `high` and `low` are valid values
• The `limit` parameter can be used to restrict the number of results returned by list operations

Rate Limiting and Pagination

• The server respects PagerDuty's rate limits
• The server automatically handles pagination for you
• The `limit` parameter can be used to control the number of results returned by list operations
• If no limit is specified, the server will return up to `pagerduty_mcp_server.utils.RESPONSE_LIMIT` results by default

User Context

Many functions accept a `current_user_context` parameter (defaults to `True`) which automatically filters results based on this context. When `current_user_context` is `True`, you cannot use certain filter parameters as they would conflict with the automatic filtering:

• For all resource types:
  • `user_ids` cannot be used with `current_user_context=True`
• For incidents:
  • `team_ids` and `service_ids` cannot be used with `current_user_context=True`
• For services:
  • `team_ids` cannot be used with `current_user_context=True`
• For escalation policies:
  • `team_ids` cannot be used with `current_user_context=True`
• For on-calls:
  • `user_ids` cannot be used with `current_user_context=True`
  • `schedule_ids` can still be used to filter by specific schedules
  • The query will show on-calls for all escalation policies associated with the current user's teams
  • This is useful for answering questions like "who is currently on-call for my team?"
  • The current user's ID is not used as a filter, so you'll see all team members who are on-call

Development

Running Tests

The test suite includes both unit tests and integration tests. Integration tests require a real connection to the PagerDuty API, while unit tests can run without API access.

The `pytest-cov` args are optional, use them to include a test coverage report in the output.

To run all tests (integration tests will be automatically skipped if `PAGERDUTY_API_TOKEN` is not set):

uv run pytest [--cov=src --cov-report=term-missing]

To run only unit tests (no API token required):

uv run pytest -m unit [--cov=src --cov-report=term-missing]

To run only integration tests (requires `PAGERDUTY_API_TOKEN` set in environment):

uv run pytest -m integration [--cov=src --cov-report=term-missing]

To run only tests related to a specific submodule:

uv run pytest -m  [--cov=src --cov-report=term-missing]

Debug Server with MCP Inspector

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector uv run pagerduty-mcp-server

Documentation

Tool Documentation - Detailed information about available tools including parameters, return types, and example queries

Conventions

• All API responses follow the standard format with metadata, resource list, and optional error
• Resource names in responses are always pluralized for consistency
• All functions that return a single item still return a list with one element
• Error responses include both a message and a code
• All timestamps are in ISO8601 format
• Tests are marked with pytest markers to indicate their type (unit/integration) and the resource they test (incidents, teams, etc.)

Example Queries

• Are there any incidents assigned to me currently in pagerduty?
• Do I have any upcoming on call schedule in next 2 weeks?
• Who else is a member of the personalization team?