Leveraging AI Development: Amazon Q with AWS MCP
The integration of Model Context Protocol (MCP) with Amazon Q Developer CLI represents a significant advancement in AI-assisted development workflows. L
Shashiraj Jeripotula
Amazon Employee
Published May 20, 2025
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a groundbreaking open standard that serves as a universal connector between AI systems and external resources. It fundamentally transforms how AI models interact with the digital world by providing a standardized framework for accessing real-time data, tools, and services.
Amazon Q Developer CLI represents a significant evolution in developer tooling, bringing AI-assisted development directly to your terminal. With the integration of Model Context Protocol (MCP), developers can now extend the CLI's capabilities by connecting to external tools, data sources, and APIs in a standardized way. This enhancement enables more context-aware development workflows, improving code generation, testing, and database operations.
This setup enables you to leverage the full power of MCP in your development workflow, providing richer context and more accurate responses for your development tasks. The combination of Amazon Q Developer CLI and MCP creates a powerful development environment that can significantly improve your productivity and code quality.
In this blog, we'll focus on integrating the AWS MCP server to enable powerful AI-assisted development capabilities within the Amazon Q Developer CLI environment.
- Amazon Q Developer CLI installed
- AWS CLI configured with appropriate credentials
MCP configuration in Amazon Q Developer CLI is managed through JSON files, Amazon Q Developer CLI supports two levels of MCP configuration:
- Global Configuration:
~/.aws/amazonq/mcp.json- Applies to all workspaces - Workspace Configuration:
.amazonq/mcp.json- Specific to the current workspace
Navigate to Installation section, copy the configuration for AWS MCP server to mcp.json.
{
"mcpServers": {
"awslabs.core-mcp-server": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"awslabs.core-mcp-server@latest"
],
"env": {
"FASTMCP_LOG_LEVEL": "ERROR"
},
"autoApprove": [],
"disabled": false
}
}
}
Open a new terminal and type q chat
$ q chat
To learn more about MCP safety, see https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazonq/latest/qdeveloper-ug/command-line-mcp-security.html
✓ awslabscore_mcp_server loaded in 3.48 s
✓ 1 of 1 mcp servers initializedWelcome to █████╗ ███╗ ███╗ █████╗ ███████╗ ██████╗ ███╗ ██╗ ██████╗
██╔══██╗████╗ ████║██╔══██╗╚══███╔╝██╔═══██╗████╗ ██║ ██╔═══██╗
███████║██╔████╔██║███████║ ███╔╝ ██║ ██║██╔██╗ ██║ ██║ ██║
██╔══██║██║╚██╔╝██║██╔══██║ ███╔╝ ██║ ██║██║╚██╗██║ ██║▄▄ ██║
██║ ██║██║ ╚═╝ ██║██║ ██║███████╗╚██████╔╝██║ ╚████║ ╚██████╔╝
╚═╝ ╚═╝╚═╝ ╚═╝╚═╝ ╚═╝╚══════╝ ╚═════╝ ╚═╝ ╚═══╝ ╚══▀▀═╝ ╭───────────────────────── Did you know? ─────────────────────────╮
│ │
│ /usage shows you a visual breakdown of your current │
│ context window usage │
│ │
╰─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯/help all commands • ctrl + j new lines • ctrl + k fuzzy search
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Your Amazon Q Developer CLI is now connected to the AWS MCP server, enabling you to inquire about functionality across your AWS account.
> are you connected to awsGreat! You are connected to AWS. Here are your AWS identity details:• Account ID: xxxxxxxx
• User ARN: arn:aws:iam::xxxxxx:user/xxxx
• User ID: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxThis means your AWS credentials are properly configured and you're authenticated
as the IAM user "xxxxxx". You can now use AWS services and resources according
to the permissions assigned to this user.Is there anything specific you'd like to do with your AWS account now that
we've confirmed the connection?
> tell what i can do with my aws accountBased on your AWS account connection, here are some things you can do:
1. View and manage your AWS resources:
• EC2 instances, S3 buckets, Lambda functions, etc.
• Check resource utilization and status
2. Deploy new resources:
• Launch new services
• Create infrastructure using CloudFormation or CDK
• Set up serverless applications
3. Monitor your environment:
• Check CloudWatch metrics and logs
• Set up alarms and notifications
The integration of MCP with Amazon Q Developer CLI marks a significant advancement in AI-assisted development. By providing standardized access to external tools and data sources, developers can create more efficient, context-aware workflows. Whether you're working on database optimization, code analysis, or full-stack development, the combination of Amazon Q Developer CLI and MCP offers a powerful platform for modern development practices.
Any opinions in this post are those of the individual author and may not reflect the opinions of AWS.