Proposal: Official MCP server for Cypress (@cypress/mcp)

[yashpreetbathla]

Summary

This is a proposal to add an official Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for Cypress — similar to what the Playwright team recently shipped with @playwright/mcp (27k+ stars in a few months).

What is MCP?

Model Context Protocol is an open standard (backed by Anthropic, adopted by Microsoft, Google, etc.) that lets AI assistants like Claude, Cursor, and VS Code Copilot connect to external tools. An MCP server exposes a set of tools that AI agents can call.

What would @cypress/mcp do?

Let AI agents interact with Cypress directly:

• cypress_run — Run specs and get structured pass/fail results
• cypress_list_specs / cypress_read_spec / cypress_write_spec — Manage test files
• cypress_get_config — Read project config
• cypress_snapshot — Get the ARIA accessibility tree of a page
• cypress_navigate, cypress_click, cypress_type — Browser automation
• cypress_screenshot — Take screenshots

Why this matters for Cypress users

1. AI-assisted test writing — AI snapshots a page, reads its ARIA tree, writes accurate selectors
2. AI-driven debugging — AI runs failing tests, reads the output, suggests fixes
3. Reduced onboarding friction — New team members ask AI to generate tests for existing pages

Proof of concept

I built a working standalone implementation at https://github.com/yashpreetbathla/cypress-mcp:

• 16 MCP tools implemented
• 25 unit tests, all passing
• Verified end-to-end: AI snapshotted a live Todo app, wrote 10 Cypress tests, all 10 passed
• Supports stdio (Claude Desktop) and HTTP/SSE (VS Code, Cursor) transports

Proposed path

Happy to contribute this as @cypress/mcp following the full Cypress contribution process. Looking for guidance on:

1. Whether this belongs in the monorepo or as a separate cypress-io/cypress-mcp repo
2. Which team to coordinate with
3. Any preferred architecture changes

References

• @playwright/mcp — the Playwright equivalent
• Model Context Protocol spec
• Proof of concept implementation

[yashpreetbathla]

Just a quick heads up I have used Playwright tooling for browser, but i created MCP sometime back which we can also use.
https://github.com/yashpreetbathla/mcp-accessibility-bridge

cc : @cacieprins @baus

[emilyrohrbough]

Hey @yashpreetbathla, thanks for submitting a proposal for a Cypress MCP that interacts with the App. An MCP to support these interactions has been top of mind. We currently have a Cloud MCP in Alpha that brings Cloud data to your agentic environments. An App MCP is the piece that would allow full agentic iteration and drive local development of new tests, as well as maintain existing ones. I will take this proposal to our team to discuss. We have a few ideas on how we'd like to support this and will review the tools you've built to see how this can fit in.

[bobydo]

I am new to MCP, this sounds a good plan. I got it from claude code.
Implementation Steps

1. Set up the MCP server project
   mkdir cypress-mcp && cd cypress-mcp
   npm init -y
   npm install @modelcontextprotocol/sdk cypress typescript

2. Define MCP tools in server.ts
   cypress_run_spec — runs a specific .cy.ts file
   cypress_list_specs — lists available test files
   cypress_get_results — returns last run's JSON results + screenshots

3. Wrap cypress.run() as async tool calls
   import cypress from 'cypress'
   const results = await cypress.run({ spec: 'cypress/e2e/login.cy.ts' })
   return JSON.stringify(results) // pass/fail counts, duration, errors

5. Register server with Claude

claude mcp add cypress node path/to/server.js