Portainer MCP connector
The Portainer connector lets Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Microsoft Copilot, and the Elaichi Agent look at the containers, Kubernetes applications, cron jobs, ingresses, and node metrics in your Portainer environments, with every call tied to the person who asked.
- Connects with an API key
- Free 14-day trial
- No credit card
List Portainer applications by cluster and show restart counts.
Working in Portainer with Elaichi
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List all Portainer roles
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List all Portainer kubernete applications
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List all Portainer applications counts
How to connect Portainer to Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or Microsoft Copilot
Step by step, for each AI app
Portainer MCP connector for Claude
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1
Open Customize, then Connectors.
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2
Press Add.
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3
Name it, paste the MCP server URL, then Continue.
https://api.elaichi.ai/mcp -
4
Sign in and approve.
On Team and Enterprise, an Owner adds it once. Everyone else turns it on for themselves.
Portainer MCP connector for Claude Code
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1
In a terminal, run
claude mcp addwith the endpoint.https://api.elaichi.ai/mcp -
2
Start Claude Code and run
/mcp. -
3
Pick elaichi, then sign in and approve in the browser.
Terminal
$ claude mcp add --transport http elaichi --scope user https://api.elaichi.ai/mcp
Use --scope project instead to share it with the repository through .mcp.json.
Portainer MCP connector for ChatGPT
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1
Open Plugins, then press the + button.
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2
Name it and paste the endpoint into Server URL.
https://api.elaichi.ai/mcp -
3
Leave Authentication on OAuth, then tick the risk acknowledgement.
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4
Press Create, then sign in and approve.
Works on the web. The plugin directory lives at chatgpt.com/plugins.
Portainer MCP connector for Cursor
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1
Open
~/.cursor/mcp.json. -
2
Add the endpoint under
mcpServers.https://api.elaichi.ai/mcp -
3
Reload Cursor, then sign in and approve.
~/.cursor/mcp.json
{
"mcpServers": {
"elaichi": {
"url": "https://api.elaichi.ai/mcp"
}
}
}
Set up per machine, so repeat it on each computer you work from.
Portainer MCP connector for Microsoft Copilot
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1
In Copilot Studio, open your agent, then Tools, Add a tool, New tool and Model Context Protocol.
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2
Paste the endpoint into Server URL, choose OAuth 2.0, then Dynamic discovery, and press Create.
https://api.elaichi.ai/mcp -
3
Create a new connection, sign in and approve, then press Add to agent.
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4
Under Channels, open Teams and Microsoft Copilot and make the agent available in Microsoft Copilot.
- Server URL
- https://api.elaichi.ai/mcp
- Authentication
- OAuth 2.0
- Type
- Dynamic discovery
Microsoft Copilot was called Microsoft 365 Copilot. Keep the tool on end-user credentials, so each person signs in as themselves.
Connect Portainer to any MCP client
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1
Add the endpoint as a remote MCP server.
https://api.elaichi.ai/mcp -
2
Sign in and approve.
{
"mcpServers": {
"elaichi": {
"url": "https://api.elaichi.ai/mcp"
}
}
}
The Elaichi Agent already has these tools, with nothing to set up.
What teams do with Portainer through Elaichi
Ask in plain English. Each person’s AI can do only what they’re allowed to, and every action it takes in Portainer is logged.
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Platform engineering
See what is running before a change
Ask which Kubernetes applications are deployed in each Portainer environment, how many there are, and how their resources look before you touch anything.
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Operations
Check cluster health from a chat window
Pull node metrics and per-application resource usage from Portainer to find out what is running hot, without opening a dashboard first.
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DevOps
Clean up finished jobs and cron jobs
List the jobs and cron jobs in a Portainer environment, spot the stale ones, and remove them by ID when the person asking is allowed to.
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Security
Review who holds which cluster role
List Portainer roles, cluster roles, and cluster role bindings to see who can do what, and remove a binding that should not be there.
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Networking
Audit ingresses and ingress controllers
Find out which ingresses exist, how many there are, and which controllers serve them, then update controller settings in bulk when policy changes.
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Development
Look up a config map without kubectl
Ask what config maps a Portainer environment holds and get a plain description of an application when something in staging looks wrong.
Try asking
- “List Portainer applications by cluster and show restart counts.”
- “Which cron jobs ran in the production Portainer environment?”
- “Summarize Portainer cluster roles and who they are bound to.”
What connecting Portainer gets you
6 screens from Elaichi, each doing one job for your Portainer account.
Ask Elaichi to work across your apps.
List Portainer applications by cluster and show restart counts.
Which cron jobs ran in the production Portainer environment?
Summarize Portainer cluster roles and who they are bound to.
Also runs in Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or Microsoft Copilot
The agent
Ask about clusters, get real answers.
Type a question in plain language and read it back from live Portainer records.
Copy the endpoint
AI apps
Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and Microsoft Copilot connect here.
One governed Portainer endpoint over OAuth, no SDK and no shared API key.
Tool catalog
256 Portainer tools ready to call.
Applications, cron jobs, configmaps and cluster roles covered with no custom code.
Toolboxes
Every team gets its own toolbox.
Platform, SRE and app teams each hold a Portainer toolbox scoped to them.
Shared connections
Share Portainer access, never the credential.
See who connected each account and how many teams and members use it.
Audit log
Every Portainer call is on record.
When, who, what happened, type and resource, appended and never edited.
From answering questions to doing the work
A trigger starts the work, inside the same permissions and the same audit log as everything else. Automations, collections and live dashboards come with the Black plan.
Portainer digest
Run 418 · started 2 minutes ago · on behalf of Emily Carter
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✓
Schedule
Every weekday at 8:00 AM
0.2s -
✓
Fetch applications
Portainer
1.4s -
✓
Group by owner
Transform
0.1s -
✓
Draft the digest
Agent step
Ran with 4 tools, returned a structured summary
6.2s -
Approve the digest
Needs approval
Assigned to Jake Morgan
Approve Deny -
Post the digest
Portainer
Queued
Automations
A schedule fires, work finishes itself.
Fetch Portainer applications, group them, draft a digest, approve, post it back.
Portainer health
Refreshed 4 minutes ago · every 15 minutes · from the applications collection
Applications
1,284 ↓ 12%
Cron jobs
96 ↓ 8%
Needs attention
3 ↑ 2
Updated this week
412 ↑ 9%
Applications created
Last 14 days
By team
Share of activity
Production 34%
Staging 27%
Platform EMEA 21%
Edge sites 18%
Collections and dashboards
Portainer health arrives before you ask.
Four metrics, 14 days of records created, split by team, refreshed on schedule.
For IT and engineering
Elaichi vs Zapier MCP vs Composio for Portainer
All three can connect Portainer to an AI assistant, and all three have admin controls. They differ in where access lives and how you pay.
| What to check | Elaichi | Zapier MCP | Composio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where the AI connects |
One address for the whole organization.
https://api.elaichi.ai/mcp
|
A server per member, created at sign-in. | An MCP endpoint per team, or an SDK. |
| Control over Portainer tools | Allow or restrict single Portainer tools, per role or user. | App and action restrictions on the account. | Role permissions, down to the action. |
| Record of calls | One audit entry per Portainer call. | A History tab of tool calls. | A log of every tool call. |
| Single sign-on | SAML or OIDC, plus SCIM, on Gold. | SAML on Enterprise. | SAML and OIDC on Enterprise. |
| Price | Free for one person; $15 per user per month on Gold. | 2 tasks per successful call. | Billed per tool call. |
Sources: Zapier MCP docs, security, usage; Composio docs, gateway, enterprise, pricing. Checked September 2026.
Longer take: Zapier MCP alternative and when you don't need an MCP gateway.
Portainer tools for your AI agents
256 tools are ready to call through Elaichi's MCP endpoint the moment you connect Portainer, governed by the same roles, restrictions, and audit log as everything else in Elaichi.
No tools match your search.
Questions, answered
How do I connect Portainer to Claude?
Connect Portainer inside Elaichi first, then in Claude open Customize, then Connectors, then Add, and paste https://api.elaichi.ai/mcp as the endpoint. Portainer connects with an API key, which is a token you create in your Portainer account settings and paste into Elaichi once. There is no OAuth application to register and no client ID or secret to generate. The whole thing takes a few minutes.
Does Portainer work with ChatGPT and Cursor as well as Claude?
Yes. Once Portainer is connected in Elaichi, the same endpoint, https://api.elaichi.ai/mcp, works in Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Microsoft Copilot, any other MCP client, and the Elaichi Agent. You connect Portainer once and every client you sign into can use it.
What can an AI agent actually do with my Portainer data?
It can list the Kubernetes applications, config maps, cron jobs, jobs, ingresses, and ingress controllers in your Portainer environments, read node and application metrics, and describe roles and cluster role bindings. Where you allow it, it can also delete a job, cron job, ingress, or cluster role binding by ID and update ingress controllers in bulk. Portainer exposes a lot through this connector, so short concrete asks like "list cron jobs in production" work better than long paragraphs.
Does connecting Portainer give the AI access to every environment?
No. The AI acts inside the access of whoever signed into Portainer, so it can only see the environments and Kubernetes resources that person's Portainer role already allows. Elaichi can narrow that further, for example to read-only, but it can never widen what Portainer itself grants.
Can I stop an agent from deleting or changing things in Portainer?
Yes. Restrictions in Elaichi work per action, so you can allow listing applications and reading metrics in Portainer while restricting every delete and bulk update. A restricted action still appears in Elaichi's tool search, flagged as restricted, but Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or Microsoft Copilot cannot run it, whatever the prompt says.
What happens to a Portainer connection when someone leaves?
Offboarding that person in Elaichi ends their access to Portainer through every AI client at once. If the Portainer connection was shared with a team, it keeps working for everyone else. Disconnecting Portainer once in Elaichi removes it from Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Microsoft Copilot, and every other client together.
Does the Portainer MCP connector work with Gemini, Codex, Claude Code or other MCP clients?
Yes. Portainer is reached over the same MCP endpoint every client uses, so anything that speaks MCP can call it — Gemini, Codex, Claude Code, Windsurf, Cline, Zed and OpenCode among them — alongside Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Microsoft Copilot, and the Elaichi Agent. The tools on offer and the access behind them are identical whichever client asks. Only the setup screen differs.
Is Elaichi an alternative to Zapier MCP for Portainer?
Yes. Both let Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor use Portainer. Zapier MCP fits a team that already automates in Zapier, since each person signs in and acts as themselves in that account. Elaichi fits when IT wants one address for the whole company, per-tool rules by role, and a record of every Portainer call.
How is Elaichi different from Composio for Portainer?
Composio gives AI agents tools and sign-in handling across 1,000+ apps, for developers building agents or people using an assistant, billed per tool call. Elaichi gives a company's own people governed access to Portainer: one address, restrictions per role or user, and $15 per user per month. Both have role permissions and a log of every call.
Put Portainer in front of your team
14 days of Black, no credit card. Connect it once and pick what each team can call.
When the trial ends, nothing is deleted. You move to the free Personal plan, and connections, roles and the audit log stay where they are.
Add one link to your AI app
The same link for everyone on your team.
https://api.elaichi.ai/mcp
ChatGPT
Claude
Cursor
Microsoft Copilot