Top development MCPs for Claude Code

Essential MCPs for developers

Development MCPs connect Claude Code to your tech stack: documentation, monitoring, project management, databases, and source code management. They turn Claude Code into a real member of your development team.

Context7: Up-to-date documentation

Access the official, up-to-date documentation of any library directly from Claude Code. No more answers based on outdated APIs. Context7 always provides the latest documentation.

Installation

# Via the Claude command
claude mcp add context7 -- npx -y @upstash/context7-mcp

JSON configuration

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "context7": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@upstash/context7-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Use cases

• Precise documentation: "Use Context7 to look up the Next.js 14 App Router docs and show me how to configure metadata"
• Guided migration: "Check the React 19 docs and help me migrate this component from useEffect to Server Actions"
• Bug resolution: "Check the Prisma docs to see if this error is a known bug and what the solution is"

Sentry: Error monitoring

Monitor and analyze production errors directly from Claude Code. View stack traces, identify error patterns, and fix bugs faster.

Installation

# Sentry requires an auth token
claude mcp add sentry -e SENTRY_AUTH_TOKEN=sntrys_your-token -- npx -y @sentry/mcp-server

JSON configuration

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "sentry": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@sentry/mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "SENTRY_AUTH_TOKEN": "sntrys_your-auth-token",
        "SENTRY_ORG": "your-organization",
        "SENTRY_PROJECT": "your-project"
      }
    }
  }
}

Use cases

• Error triage: "Show me the 10 most frequent errors in production this week"
• Bug analysis: "Analyze this Sentry error, find the relevant file in our code, and suggest a fix"
• Proactive monitoring: "Are there any new errors since the last deployment?"

Linear: Project management

Manage your Linear issues, sprints, and projects directly from Claude Code. Create tickets, update statuses, and sync your code with your project management.

JSON configuration (example)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "linear": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@linear/mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "LINEAR_API_KEY": "lin_api_your-linear-key"
      }
    }
  }
}

Use cases

• Integrated workflow: "Create a Linear issue for the bug I just found, with the stack trace and repro steps"
• Sprint tracking: "Show me the issues assigned to me in the current sprint"
• Automatic updates: "Mark issue LIN-42 as done and add a comment with the PR link"

PostgreSQL / Supabase: Databases

Query your databases directly from Claude Code. Run SQL queries, analyze schemas, export results, and optimize your queries.

PostgreSQL installation

# Native PostgreSQL
claude mcp add postgres -e DATABASE_URL=postgresql://user:pass@host:5432/db -- npx -y @modelcontextprotocol/server-postgres

PostgreSQL JSON configuration

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "postgres": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-postgres"],
      "env": {
        "DATABASE_URL": "postgresql://user:password@localhost:5432/my-database"
      }
    }
  }
}

Supabase configuration

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "supabase": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@supabase/mcp-server-supabase"],
      "env": {
        "SUPABASE_URL": "https://your-project.supabase.co",
        "SUPABASE_SERVICE_ROLE_KEY": "your-service-role-key"
      }
    }
  }
}

Use cases

• Data exploration: "Show me the users table schema and the last 10 records"
• Analysis and statistics: "Calculate the number of signups per month over the last 6 months"
• Query generation: "Write a SQL query to find users inactive for more than 90 days"
• Optimization: "Analyze this slow query and suggest indexes to speed it up"

GitHub: Source code management

Interact with GitHub at an advanced level from Claude Code. Claude Code already has native Git integration, but the GitHub MCP adds access to issues, pull requests, reviews, CI/CD workflows, and code search across all your repos.

Installation

# GitHub requires a Personal Access Token
claude mcp add github -e GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN=ghp_your-token -- npx -y @modelcontextprotocol/server-github

JSON configuration

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "github": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-github"],
      "env": {
        "GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN": "ghp_your-github-token"
      }
    }
  }
}

Use cases

• PR management: "Create a pull request for the current branch with a summary of changes"
• Code review: "Show me the review comments on PR #42 and help me respond to them"
• Code search: "Search across all our repos for where we use the deprecated calculateTotal function"
• Issues: "Create an issue for the bug we just found with the repro steps and logs"
• CI/CD: "Show me the status of the latest GitHub Actions workflow and why it failed"

Summary

Limitations and gotchas

These MCPs are powerful, but they have concrete limitations worth knowing.

API quotas and rate limiting

• GitHub: the REST API limits to 5,000 requests/hour with a token. Code searches are even more limited (30 requests/minute). An intensive workflow can hit these limits.
• Sentry: limits depend on your plan. The free plan is restrictive on API request volume.
• Linear: roughly 100 requests/minute. Enough for normal use, but a migration script can get blocked.
• PostgreSQL: no network rate limit, but heavy queries on a production database can impact performance.

Latency and reliability

• Context7: depends on Upstash's indexing. If a library just published a new version, there may be a few hours' delay before the docs are current.
• Sentry: recent events may not appear immediately (indexing in progress).
• GitHub: cross-repo code searches are inherently slow (GitHub indexing).

Common failure cases

• GitHub token with insufficient scopes: a Fine-grained token without the workflow scope won't be able to read GitHub Actions. The error isn't always obvious.
• PostgreSQL connection string: a typo in the connection URL causes the MCP to fail silently. Test it first with psql.
• Misconfigured Sentry org/project: the MCP starts but returns nothing if the organization or project don't match.

Evaluating a third-party MCP

Before installing a community development MCP, check:

Next steps

• Install and configure an MCP: Detailed installation guide and troubleshooting
• Top design & UI MCPs: Playwright, Chrome DevTools, 21st.dev Magic, Puppeteer
• Build your first MCP workflow: Combine Context7 + GitHub + Playwright
• Create a custom MCP in TypeScript: Build your own MCP server
• Understanding MCPs: Back to protocol fundamentals