Passing environment variables to MCP servers

[rahuldave]

I have the following server(config.yaml):

mcp:
  servers:
    fetch:
      command: "uvx"
      args: ["mcp-server-fetch"]
    meilisearch:
      command: "uvx"
      args: ["-n", "meilisearch-mcp"]

the meilisearch mcp needs env vars for the melisearch master key and the URL:PORT at which the meilisearch server itself runs. I tried passing it as variables before the uvx as you would do in a script but that didnt work. Whats the right way to do this? I cant be the only one who has encountered this need...

To be precise, the variables are also not inhereited from the parent environment, ie the python server (fastapi) in which i am using the mcp_agent library.

[rahuldave]

Specifically the putting of the env in the secretes yaml file does not actually work! The only way i can get the MCP server to get the env is to have the llm negotiate it with the env..

[rahuldave]

Never mind, melisearch MCP changed the env variables. Putting it in the secrets file works well. And i can deploy to docker by bind mounting the secrets file. Having a mechanism to autogen the secrets file from env variables is probably the safest though!