Use the Firestore remote MCP server

Use the Firestore remote MCP server

Preview

This feature is subject to the "Pre-GA Offerings Terms" in the General Service Terms section of the Service Specific Terms, and the Additional Terms for Generative AI Preview Products. Pre-GA features are available "as is" and might have limited support. For more information, see the launch stage descriptions.

This document describes how to use the Firestore remote Model Context Protocol (MCP) server to connect to Firestore from AI applications such as Gemini CLI, Claude, or in AI applications that you're developing. The Firestore remote MCP server lets you interact with documents stored in a Firestore database from you AI application. .

Model Context Protocol (MCP) standardizes how large language models (LLMs) and AI applications or agents connect to external data sources. MCP servers let you use their tools, resources, and prompts to take actions and get updated data from their backend service.

What's the difference between local and remote MCP servers?

Local MCP servers

Typically run on your local machine and use the standard input and output streams (stdio) for communication between services on the same device.

Remote MCP servers

Run on the service's infrastructure and offer an HTTP endpoint to AI applications for communication between the AI MCP client and the MCP server. For more information about MCP architecture, see MCP architecture.

Before you begin

Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.

In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

Roles required to select or create a project

• Select a project: Selecting a project doesn't require a specific IAM role—you can select any project that you've been granted a role on.
• Create a project: To create a project, you need the Project Creator role (roles/resourcemanager.projectCreator), which contains the resourcemanager.projects.create permission. Learn how to grant roles.

Note: If you don't plan to keep the resources that you create in this procedure, create a project instead of selecting an existing project. After you finish these steps, you can delete the project, removing all resources associated with the project.

Go to project selector

If you're using an existing project for this guide, verify that you have the permissions required to complete this guide. If you created a new project, then you already have the required permissions.

Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

Install the Google Cloud CLI.

Note: If you installed the gcloud CLI previously, make sure you have the latest version by running gcloud components update.

If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.

To initialize the gcloud CLI, run the following command:

gcloud init

In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

Roles required to select or create a project

• Select a project: Selecting a project doesn't require a specific IAM role—you can select any project that you've been granted a role on.
• Create a project: To create a project, you need the Project Creator role (roles/resourcemanager.projectCreator), which contains the resourcemanager.projects.create permission. Learn how to grant roles.

Note: If you don't plan to keep the resources that you create in this procedure, create a project instead of selecting an existing project. After you finish these steps, you can delete the project, removing all resources associated with the project.

Go to project selector

If you're using an existing project for this guide, verify that you have the permissions required to complete this guide. If you created a new project, then you already have the required permissions.

Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

Install the Google Cloud CLI.

Note: If you installed the gcloud CLI previously, make sure you have the latest version by running gcloud components update.

If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.

To initialize the gcloud CLI, run the following command:

gcloud init

1. Select a Firestore in Native mode database to use or create one. Only Native mode databases in Enterprise or Standard edition support the remote MCP server.

Required roles

To get the permissions that you need to enable the Firestore MCP server and interact with Firestore documents, ask your administrator to grant you the following IAM roles on the project where you want to enable the Firestore MCP server:

• Service Usage Admin (roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin)
• Make MCP tool calls: MCP Tool User (roles/mcp.toolUser)
• Read and edit Firestore documents: Firestore User (roles/datastore.user)

For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

These predefined roles contain the permissions required to enable the Firestore MCP server and interact with Firestore documents. To see the exact permissions that are required, expand the Required permissions section:

Required permissions

The following permissions are required to enable the Firestore MCP server and interact with Firestore documents:

• serviceusage.mcppolicy.get
• serviceusage.mcppolicy.update
• Make MCP tool calls: mcp.tools.call
• Read and edit Firestore documents:
  • datastore.entities.allocateIds
  • datastore.entities.create
  • datastore.entities.delete
  • datastore.entities.get
  • datastore.entities.list
  • datastore.entities.update

You might also be able to get these permissions with custom roles or other predefined roles.

Enable or disable the Firestore MCP server

You can enable or disable the Firestore MCP server in a project with the gcloud beta services mcp enable command. For more information, see the following sections.

Enable the Firestore MCP server in a project

If you are using different projects for your client credentials, such as service account keys, OAuth client ID or API keys, and for hosting your resources, then you must enable the Firestore service and the Firestore remote MCP server on both projects.

To enable the Firestore MCP server in your Google Cloud project, run the following command:

gcloud beta services mcp enable firestore.googleapis.com \
    --project=PROJECT_ID

Replace PROJECT_ID with the Google Cloud project ID.

The Firestore remote MCP server is enabled for use in your Google Cloud Project. If the Firestore service isn't enabled for your Google Cloud project, you are prompted to enable the service before enabling the Firestore remote MCP server.

As a security best practice, we recommend that you enable MCP servers only for the services required for your AI application to function.

Disable the Firestore MCP server in a project

To disable the Firestore MCP server in your Google Cloud project, run the following command:

gcloud beta services mcp disable SERVICE \
    --project=PROJECT_ID

The Firestore MCP server is disabled for use in your Google Cloud Project.

Authentication and authorization

Firestore MCP servers use the OAuth 2.0 protocol with Identity and Access Management (IAM) for authentication and authorization. All Google Cloud identities are supported for authentication to MCP servers.

We recommend creating a separate identity for agents using MCP tools so that access to resources can be controlled and monitored. For more information on authentication, see Authenticate to MCP servers.

Firestore MCP OAuth scopes

OAuth 2.0 uses scopes and credentials to determine if an authenticated principal is authorized to take a specific action on a resource. For more information about OAuth 2.0 scopes at Google, read Using OAuth 2.0 to access Google APIs.

Firestore has the following MCP tool OAuth scopes:

Scope URI for gcloud CLI	Description
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-platform	See, edit, configure, and delete your Google Cloud data and see the email address for your Google Account.

Additional scopes might be required on the resources accessed during a tool call. To view a list of scopes required for Firestore, see Firestore API.

Configure an MCP client to use the Firestore MCP server

AI applications and agents, such as Claude or Gemini CLI, can instantiate an MCP client that connects to a single MCP server. An AI application can have multiple clients that connect to different MCP servers. To connect to a remote MCP server, the MCP client must know at a minimum the URL of the remote MCP server.

In your AI application, look for a way to connect to a remote MCP server. You are prompted to enter details about the server, such as its name and URL.

For the Firestore MCP server, enter the following as required:

• Server name: Firestore MCP server
• Server URL or Endpoint: firestore.googleapis.com/mcp
• Transport: HTTP
• Authentication details: Depending on how you want to authenticate, you can enter your Google Cloud credentials, your OAuth Client ID and secret, or an agent identity and credentials. For more information on authentication, see Authenticate to MCP servers.
• OAuth scope: the OAuth 2.0 scope that you want to use when connecting to the Firestore MCP server.

For host specific guidance, see the following:

• Claude.ai
• Gemini CLI

For more general guidance, see the following resources:

• Connect to remote MCP servers.
• Configure MCP in an AI application.

Available tools

To view details of available MCP tools and their descriptions for the Firestore MCP server, see the Firestore MCP reference.

List tools

Use the MCP inspector to list tools, or send a tools/list HTTP request directly to the Firestore remote MCP server. The tools/list method doesn't require authentication.

POST /mcp HTTP/1.1
Host: firestore.googleapis.com
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "method": "tools/list",
}

Sample use cases

The following are sample use cases and prompts for the Firestore MCP server:

• "What tools are available for the Firestore MCP server?"
• "Add a document with collection "book" under my Firestore database "my-database" with the Google Cloud project "my-project" with generated book info."
• "Get the information for the book with ID 3VyGFIAPRHUNeuH5h2eb from the book collection."
• "Update the year field of document 3VyGFIAPRHUNeuH5h2eb to 1995."
• "List all books under the book collection."
• "List all collections IDs under the root of the "my-database" Firestore database."
• "Delete the document 3VyGFIAPRHUNeuH5h2eb under the book collection."

Optional security and safety configurations

MCP introduces new security risks and considerations due to the wide variety of actions that can be taken with MCP tools. To minimize and manage these risks, Google Cloud offers defaults and customizable policies to control the use of MCP tools in your Google Cloud organization or project.

For more information about MCP security and governance, see AI security and safety.

Model Armor

Model Armor is a Google Cloud service designed to enhance the security and safety of your AI applications. It works by proactively screening LLM prompts and responses, protecting against various risks and supporting responsible AI practices. Whether you are deploying AI in your cloud environment, or on external cloud providers, Model Armor can help you prevent malicious input, verify content safety, protect sensitive data, maintain compliance, and enforce your AI safety and security policies consistently across your diverse AI landscape.

Model Armor is only available in specific regional locations. If Model Armor is enabled for a project, and a call to that project comes from an unsupported region, Model Armor makes a cross-regional call. For more information, see [Model Armor locations][ma-locations].

Caution: Model Armor logs the entire payload if a request fails. This might expose sensitive information in the logs.

Enable Model Armor

To enable Model Armor, complete the following steps:

To enable Model Armor on your

Google Cloud project, run the following gcloud CLI command:

gcloud services enable modelarmor.googleapis.com \
    --project=PROJECT_ID

Replace PROJECT_ID with your Google Cloud project ID.

Configure protection for Google and Google Cloud remote MCP servers

To protect your MCP tool calls and responses, you create a Model Armor floor setting and then enable MCP content security for your project. A floor setting defines the minimum security filters that apply across the project. This configuration applies a consistent set of filters to all MCP tool calls and responses within the project.

Tip: Don't enable the prompt injection and jailbreak filter unless your MCP traffic carries natural language data.

1. Set up a Model Armor floor setting with MCP sanitization enabled. For more information, see Configure Model Armor floor settings.

   Note: If the agent and the MCP server are in different projects, you can create floor settings in both projects (the client project and the resource project). In this case, Model Armor is invoked twice, once for each project.

   See the following example command:

   gcloud model-armor floorsettings update \
   --full-uri='projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/global/floorSetting' \
   --enable-floor-setting-enforcement=TRUE \
   --add-integrated-services=GOOGLE_MCP_SERVER \
   --google-mcp-server-enforcement-type=INSPECT_AND_BLOCK \
   --enable-google-mcp-server-cloud-logging \
   --malicious-uri-filter-settings-enforcement=ENABLED \
   --add-rai-settings-filters='[{"confidenceLevel": "HIGH", "filterType": "DANGEROUS"}]'

   Replace PROJECT_ID with your Google Cloud project ID.

   Note the following settings:

   • INSPECT_AND_BLOCK: The enforcement type that inspects content for the Google MCP server and blocks prompts and responses that match the filters.
   • ENABLED: The setting that enables a filter or enforcement.
   • HIGH: The confidence level for the Responsible AI - Dangerous filter settings. You can modify this setting, though lower values might result in more false positives. For more information, see Configure floor settings.

2. For your project, enable Model Armor protection for remote MCP servers.

   gcloud beta services mcp content-security add modelarmor.googleapis.com --project=PROJECT_ID

   Replace PROJECT_ID with your Google Cloud project ID. After you run this command, Model Armor sanitizes all MCP tool calls and responses from the project, regardless of where the calls and responses originate.

3. To confirm that Google MCP traffic is sent to Model Armor, run the following command:

   gcloud beta services mcp content-security get --project=PROJECT_ID
   

   Replace PROJECT_ID with the Google Cloud project ID.

Disable Model Armor in a project

To disable Model Armor on a Google Cloud project, run the following command:

gcloud beta services mcp content-security remove modelarmor.googleapis.com \
    --project=PROJECT_ID

Replace PROJECT_ID with the Google Cloud project ID.

Google MCP traffic won't be scanned by Model Armor for the specified project.

Disable scanning MCP traffic with Model Armor

If you want to use Model Armor in a project, and you want to stop scanning Google MCP traffic with Model Armor, run the following command:

gcloud model-armor floorsettings update \
  --full-uri='projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/global/floorSetting' \
  --remove-integrated-services=GOOGLE_MCP_SERVER

Replace PROJECT_ID with the Google Cloud project ID.

Model Armor won't scan MCP traffic in the project.

What's next

• Read the Firestore MCP reference documentation.
• Learn more about Google Cloud MCP servers.
• Learn how to use an AI prompt to draft security rules