Set up the Honeycomb MCP server

The Honeycomb MCP server gives AI agents access to your team's observability data — querying datasets, browsing environments, and analyzing trace and log data. This guide covers enabling Honeycomb Intelligence, generating credentials, and connecting Honeycomb's hosted MCP server to MintMCP.

Prerequisites

• A MintMCP admin account
• A Honeycomb account (sign up at honeycomb.io)
• Honeycomb Intelligence enabled on your team. A team owner can enable it under Account > Team Settings > Honeycomb Intelligence.

Server endpoint

Honeycomb hosts the MCP server at two endpoints depending on your region:

Region	URL
US (default)	https://mcp.honeycomb.io/mcp
EU	https://mcp.eu1.honeycomb.io/mcp

Use the URL that matches where your Honeycomb team is hosted. You can confirm your region under Account > Team Settings.

Add Honeycomb to MintMCP

There are two ways to authenticate: per-user OAuth (recommended) or a shared Management API key.

Per-user OAuth (recommended)

Per-user OAuth lets each team member authenticate with their own Honeycomb account. MintMCP handles OAuth client registration automatically — no app registration needed.

1. In MintMCP, go to MCP store > Manage store
2. Click + Add an MCP to your registry → Connect to an MCP by URL
3. Enter the server URL for your region (see Server endpoint above)
4. Set Connection type to Per-user credentials
5. Set Authorization method to OAuth
6. Click Create

When users first use the Honeycomb MCP server through MintMCP, they are prompted to authorize access with their Honeycomb account.

Management API key

Use this option for unattended agents or when team members don't have individual Honeycomb accounts. Only team owners can create Management API keys.

Generate a Management API key

1. Log into Honeycomb and go to Account > Team Settings > API Keys

2. Click Create Management API Key
3. Name the key (for example, "MintMCP")
4. Under Model Context Protocol, select Read
5. Under Environments, select Read
6. Optionally, under Model Context Protocol, also select Write — required only for the create_board tool
7. Click Create and copy both the Key ID and the Secret Key — you cannot retrieve the secret key after closing this page

Scope reference:

Capability	Scope	Permission
All MCP operations	Model Context Protocol	Read
List environments	Environments	Read
Create boards	Model Context Protocol	Write

Connect in MintMCP

1. In MintMCP, go to MCP store > Manage store
2. Click + Add an MCP to your registry → Connect to an MCP by URL
3. Enter the server URL for your region (see Server endpoint above)
4. Set Connection type to Shared credentials
5. Set Authorization method to Bearer token
6. Enter your bearer token in the format KEY_ID:SECRET_KEY, replacing KEY_ID with your Key ID and SECRET_KEY with your Secret Key
7. Click Create

Security considerations

• Management API keys are shown only once at creation — store the Key ID and Secret Key somewhere safe before closing the page.
• Limit API key scopes to what your team needs: Read on both Model Context Protocol and Environments is sufficient for most operations; Write is only needed to create boards.
• Only Honeycomb team owners can create Management API keys.
• Per-user OAuth ties each tool call to an individual Honeycomb identity, which provides a cleaner audit trail than a shared API key.

Next steps

• Tool customization — Control which Honeycomb tools are exposed to users
• MCP gateway administration — Manage access and permissions