Feature Request: Support connecting to external MCP server in grafana-llm-app plugin

[nickprudnik]

Please add support for configuring an external MCP server, with the following features:

• Ability to specify the external MCP server URL
• Support for authentication (e.g., token-based or basic auth)
• Option to switch between local and external MCP via plugin settings or a flag

[jtheory]

Hi, share a little more about what you'd like to be able to do -- is this about hooking up any MCP server (configurable) to the /mcp endpoint? Or possibly more than one?

There are security issues around enabling external MCP servers (e.g. malicious tool definitions), but this is an idea we've been discussing elsewhere.

[mikhail-vl]

@jtheory That's the idea - use LLM App to connect to external MCP servers in a secure way (passwords, tokens).

We added a chat functionality in the Business Links community panel (https://grafana.com/grafana/plugins/volkovlabs-links-panel/) and use LLM App to interact with LLM. The goal is to connect to Grafana and MCP servers with REST APIs endpoints to get access to the data and perform actions.

We may add connecting external MCP servers in the Panel itself, but we can't support authentication because there is no secure storage, available only in Apps and Data Sources.