sentry mcp 0.48.0: silent search fallback and stale docs #2050

Running the released cli@0.48.0 sentry mcp (npm, npx @sentry/mcp-server, and the install-script binary) over stdio against sentry.io found three problems that affect first-time setups, plus a few smaller issues. The core flows worked: startup, tools/list, real tool calls, scoping, the skills flags, and the auth error messages.

1. Natural-language search returns empty results without an LLM key

The tool descriptions say query is "natural language (preferred)". With no OPENAI_API_KEY/ANTHROPIC_API_KEY/OPENROUTER_API_KEY set, the English text is sent to Sentry as a literal search. The tools then report "No results found" and never say the query was not translated.

• search_issues {"organizationSlug":"sentry","query":"top unresolved errors in the javascript project today"} returned 0 issues. query: "is:unresolved" on the same project returned results.
• search_errors {"query":"most common error types in the last hour","projectSlug":"javascript"} and search_logs {"query":"error logs from the last 15 minutes"} ran the sentence as the query string (shown under "Executed Search") and returned no results.
• For events, translateWithSeer (packages/mcp-core/src/tools/support/search-events/seer.ts) was tried first. GET /organizations/sentry/search-agent/state/{runId}/ returned 403, translateWithSeer returned null, and the raw text was used without any note in the response. It is unknown whether the 403 is specific to the test account or happens for all users without Seer access.
• search_issues has no Seer path: in search-issues.ts, without hasAgentProvider() the query is passed through as-is.
• The only signal is a startup warning on stderr, which MCP clients do not usually show.

2. The docs tools return a removed MCP setup page

• search_docs {"query":"configure sentry mcp in claude code"} returns https://docs.sentry.io/ai/mcp (ai/mcp.md) as the top hit, with snippet content.
• That page no longer exists: docs.sentry.io/ai/mcp/ redirects (308) to https://mcp.sentry.dev/, and ai/mcp.md serves "Page Not Found".
• get_doc {"path":"ai/mcp.md"} returns the "Page Not Found" markdown with isError: false.

3. A scope naming a nonexistent org is only reported on each call

• sentry mcp definitely-not-a-real-org-xyz/ starts normally, and whoami reports the constraint.
• Every scoped call then fails with a generic API error (404): Not found. Please verify that the organization, project, or resource ID is correct, which does not mention the configured scope.

Minor

• --disable-skills docs removes no tools, because search_docs/get_doc also belong to inspect. The flag is accepted without a warning.
• --experimental removes get_profile and get_profile_details and adds search_attributes. It is not clear whether removing the profile tools is intended.
• --access-token is listed in sentry mcp --help, while the other deprecated flags (--host, --url, --insecure-http, --organization-slug, --project-slug) are hidden.
• With NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS set, npx @sentry/mcp-server auth status suggests sentry cli defaults ca-cert ..., which is not a command in that package.
• The install script's "Get started" output does not mention sentry mcp.
• Issue descriptions in get_sentry_resource output contain escaped URLs, such as https\://mcp.sentry.dev/....
• tools/list is about 250 KB of compact JSON (73 tools) with EXPOSE_ALL_TOOLS on. That is heavy for clients without native tool search.

Not covered

These were not tested: real agent clients (Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code), interactive TTY login, the configured-LLM-key path, 401 and token-refresh handling, and the macOS and Windows binaries.

via @dcramer.

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