Implementation:CrewAIInc CrewAI MCP Server Adapter

Knowledge Sources	CrewAI
Domains	MCP, Tool_Integration, Protocol_Adapter
Last Updated	2026-02-11 00:00 GMT

Overview

Concrete adapter for integrating Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers with CrewAI provided by CrewAI.

Description

The MCPServerAdapter class manages the full lifecycle of an MCP server connection and makes its tools available to CrewAI agents. It supports both STDIO (local) and SSE (remote) server connections with configurable connection timeouts. Internally, it uses the CrewAIToolAdapter class (implementing the ToolAdapter interface from mcpadapt) to convert MCP tool definitions into CrewAI BaseTool instances. The adapter sanitizes tool names, converts MCP input schemas to Pydantic models using CrewAI's own schema utilities, and extracts text content from CallToolResult responses. Tool access is provided through a ToolCollection wrapper that supports both name-based and index-based access, with optional filtering by tool names. The adapter supports context manager usage for automatic cleanup and includes interactive prompting to install missing MCP dependencies.

Usage

Import and use MCPServerAdapter when you need to connect CrewAI agents to MCP-compatible tool servers. Use it as a context manager or manage the lifecycle manually with start() and stop() methods. This adapter opens CrewAI to the entire MCP ecosystem of community-built tools.

Code Reference

Source Location

• Repository: CrewAI
• File: lib/crewai-tools/src/crewai_tools/adapters/mcp_adapter.py
• Lines: 1-235

Signature

class MCPServerAdapter:
    def __init__(
        self,
        serverparams: StdioServerParameters | dict[str, Any],
        *tool_names: str,
        connect_timeout: int = 30,
    ) -> None:

Import

from crewai_tools import MCPServerAdapter

I/O Contract

Inputs

Name	Type	Required	Description
serverparams	dict[str, Any]	Yes	MCP server parameters; StdioServerParameters for STDIO servers or dict with "url" key for SSE servers
*tool_names	str (variadic)	No	Optional tool names to filter; only tools with matching names will be available
connect_timeout	int	No	Connection timeout in seconds to the MCP server (default: 30)

Outputs

Name	Type	Description
tools (property)	ToolCollection[BaseTool]	Collection of CrewAI tools adapted from MCP server, accessible by name or index
__enter__() return	ToolCollection[BaseTool]	Same as tools property, for context manager usage

Usage Examples

Context Manager with STDIO

from mcp import StdioServerParameters
from crewai_tools import MCPServerAdapter

server_params = StdioServerParameters(
    command="npx",
    args=["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem", "/path/to/dir"],
)

with MCPServerAdapter(server_params) as tools:
    # tools is a ToolCollection of CrewAI BaseTool instances
    agent = Agent(role="researcher", tools=tools)

SSE Connection with Tool Filtering

from crewai_tools import MCPServerAdapter

with MCPServerAdapter(
    {"url": "http://localhost:8000/sse"},
    "search", "read_file",
    connect_timeout=60,
) as filtered_tools:
    # Only "search" and "read_file" tools are available
    agent = Agent(role="researcher", tools=filtered_tools)

Manual Lifecycle Management

from crewai_tools import MCPServerAdapter

mcp_server = MCPServerAdapter(server_params)
try:
    tools = mcp_server.tools
    # Use tools with crew
finally:
    mcp_server.stop()

Related Pages

• Principle needed: MCP integration principle for CrewAI adapter pattern