External

Connect an AI SRE agent to an MCP server you host yourself, over Streamable HTTP.

Besides the MCP servers ilert hosts for you, your AI SRE agent can talk to MCP servers that you host. You supply the endpoint and the credential, and ilert connects out to it over Streamable HTTP whenever the agent needs a tool.

Use a custom MCP server when:

• your observability or ticketing vendor already ships its own MCP server (see the branded pages below),
• you run an MCP server in front of an internal system, or
• you want to expose your own tools to the agent.

The difference from an ilert-hosted server is ownership: ilert does not know which tools your server exposes or what they are allowed to do. The tools are read from your server at runtime, and whatever access you grant the credential is the access the agent gets.

Auth types

Custom MCP connectors are created per auth type. Pick the type that matches how your server authenticates:

Type	Fields
API Key	Host URL, API key header (defaults to Authorization), Secret
OAuth2 (client credentials)	Host URL, Token URL, Client ID, Scopes, Audience, Client authentication (Client secret (Basic auth) or Client secret (request body)), Secret
OAuth2 (refresh token)	Host URL, Token URL, Scopes, Refresh token
Bearer Token	Host URL, Secret
No auth	Host URL

For both OAuth2 types ilert fetches the access token from your Token URL itself and refreshes it as needed — you never paste an access token.

Host URL rules

The Host URL is the full MCP endpoint of your server, for example https://mcp.example.com/mcp.

It must be a public https:// URL.

If your MCP server runs inside your own network, expose it through a load balancer, ingress controller or reverse proxy with a public HTTPS hostname first. ilert connects from the outside — it cannot reach an internal address.

Create a custom MCP connector

1

Navigate to Connectors in the ilert navigation menu

2

Scroll to the MCP Servers section and locate the Custom MCP servers card

3

Click Connect (or the ⋮ menu if you already have connectors) and choose the auth type from the menu

4

Fill in the dialog:

• Name: a name for the connector (e.g., "Internal Tools MCP")
• Host URL: the full MCP endpoint, e.g. https://mcp.example.com/mcp
• the remaining fields for the auth type you picked (see the table above)

5

Click Test connection. ilert connects to your server and lists its tools. On success you get a Connection successful confirmation

6

Click Save

Test connection is optional — you can save without it. It is the fastest way to tell a wrong URL or an expired secret apart from a server-side problem, so run it before you attach the connector to an agent.

Connect a custom MCP server with agent

1

Navigate to Agents in the ilert navigation menu

2

Open the agent detail view for the agent you want to configure

3

Go to the Tools tab

4

Scroll to the External MCP Servers section and, under Custom MCP servers, click Add custom MCP server

5

In the dialog:

• Select connector: choose the connector you created, or "Create new connector" to create one here
• Type, Name and the auth fields appear only when you create a new connector

6

Click Add

7

Expand the server card to see its tools, then enable the ones the agent may use

8

Save the agent

Give the credential the least privilege it needs on your side, and enable only the tools you want the agent to use.

Supported external MCP servers

Several MCP servers have special support in ilert agents. They have their own settings dialogs to ease setup:

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