Glean MCP Server

Overview

The Glean MCP server bridges the gap between Claude‑style AI assistants and the Glean knowledge‑base platform. By exposing Glean’s powerful search and chat APIs through the Model Context Protocol, it gives developers a straightforward way to add real‑time, contextual search and conversational capabilities to their AI workflows. This eliminates the need for custom integration code or manual API handling, allowing teams to focus on building higher‑level application logic.

What problem does it solve?

Many AI assistants are limited to the knowledge they were trained on, which quickly becomes stale. Integrating an up‑to‑date search layer is essential for domains such as internal documentation, compliance records, or any data that changes frequently. The Glean MCP server solves this by providing a ready‑made, protocol‑compliant bridge that can be plugged into any MCP‑compatible client. It handles authentication, request routing, and response formatting automatically, so developers no longer need to write boilerplate code for interacting with Glean.

Core functionality and value

At its heart, the server offers two tools:

• Search – Given a natural‑language query, it returns a ranked list of relevant documents from the Glean index. This enables AI assistants to surface precise information without exposing raw search logic.
• Chat – A conversational interface that lets users ask follow‑up questions or request clarifications, leveraging Glean’s chat API to maintain context across turns.

These tools are valuable because they turn a static knowledge base into an interactive resource. Developers can embed the search tool directly in prompts, allowing Claude to query Glean on demand and retrieve up‑to‑date facts. The chat tool adds a natural conversational layer, useful for support bots or internal help desks where users prefer dialogue over keyword queries.

Key features explained

• MCP compliance – The server implements the full Model Context Protocol, ensuring seamless discovery and invocation by any MCP‑aware client such as Claude Desktop.
• Environment‑based configuration – API credentials are injected via Docker environment variables, keeping secrets out of the codebase and simplifying deployment.
• Docker‑ready – The project ships a Dockerfile, making it trivial to spin up a container that can be run on any host with Docker support.
• Open‑source and MIT licensed – The source code is freely available, allowing teams to audit, modify, or extend the server without licensing constraints.

Use cases and real‑world scenarios

• Enterprise knowledge bases – Integrate internal policy documents, product specs, or code repositories so that AI assistants can answer employee queries in real time.
• Customer support – Deploy a chat tool that pulls from Glean’s indexed FAQs or troubleshooting guides, giving agents instant, context‑aware responses.
• Compliance and audit – Ensure that AI outputs reference the latest regulatory documents by querying Glean before generating responses.
• Developer tooling – Let programmers ask for code snippets or documentation directly from the project’s knowledge base, improving productivity.

Integration with AI workflows

Once registered in a client’s MCP configuration, the server appears as two callable tools. Developers can reference them in prompts using standard MCP syntax (e.g., or ). The server handles the round‑trip to Glean, returning structured results that Claude can ingest and incorporate into its response generation. This tight integration removes the friction of manual API calls, enabling a smoother developer experience and faster iteration cycles.

Standout advantages

The most compelling benefit is the zero‑code integration it offers. Teams can add powerful search and conversational capabilities to their AI assistants with a single Docker run command, avoiding the overhead of writing authentication handlers or parsing raw JSON. Additionally, because it is built on top of Glean’s own APIs, developers inherit all of Glean’s scalability, security, and search quality without extra effort. This makes the Glean MCP server a practical, production‑ready solution for any organization looking to enrich its AI assistants with dynamic, contextually relevant knowledge.