Azure MCP — ZedExt

Azure MCP for Zed

A Zed extension that wires Microsoft's Azure MCP server into Zed's Agent Panel. Your AI agent gets tools to manage and query Azure — resource groups, storage, Key Vault, Functions, AKS, Cosmos DB, Monitor, and dozens more services — authenticated with your existing Azure identity.

Prerequisites

Azure sign-in: the server uses DefaultAzureCredential. Run az login before using the agent, or provide a service principal via the standard AZURE_TENANT_ID / AZURE_CLIENT_ID / AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET environment variables. The extension never handles or stores credentials.
Nothing else. The @azure/mcp server is installed automatically with Zed's managed Node.js runtime — you don't need Node, npm, or npx on your machine.

Install

Zed → Extensions (zed: extensions) → search Azure MCP → Install. Then open the Agent Panel, and under Settings → Model Context Protocol confirm azure-mcp is running.

Settings

All settings are optional — the extension works with zero configuration. Configure in settings.json under context_servers:

{
  "context_servers": {
    "azure-mcp": {
      "settings": {
        // Limit which Azure services load (default: all).
        // The full tool set is large; narrowing it keeps the agent focused.
        "namespaces": ["storage", "functionapp", "keyvault"],

        // "namespace" (default) = one tool per service.
        // "consolidated" | "all" | "single" also supported.
        "mode": "namespace",

        // true = agent can only read Azure state, never modify it.
        // Default is false (full management access) — flip this on if you
        // want a safety net.
        "read_only": false,

        // Expose only specific tools by name (implies "all" mode).
        "tools": [],

        // "AzureCloud" (default), "AzureChinaCloud", "AzureUSGovernment".
        "cloud": "AzureCloud",

        // Verbose server logging to stderr.
        "debug": false,

        // "latest" (default) or an exact @azure/mcp version pin.
        "version": "latest"
      }
    }
  }
}

Recommended presets

The full server exposes a lot of tools; these focused bundles work well in practice. Drop one into context_servers.azure-mcp.settings:

Serverless development — Functions, their storage, and logs:

{ "namespaces": ["functionapp", "functions", "storage", "monitor"] }

Data work — databases plus the storage accounts around them:

{ "namespaces": ["cosmos", "sql", "postgres", "storage"] }

Ops / SRE — health, recommendations, capacity:

{ "namespaces": ["monitor", "resourcehealth", "advisor", "quota"] }

Safe auditing — read-only governance review; the agent can inspect but never change anything:

{ "read_only": true, "namespaces": ["advisor", "resourcehealth", "policy"] }

What the agent can do with it

"List my Azure resource groups" / "What's in resource group X?"
"Show the app settings of my function app"
"Query my Log Analytics workspace for errors in the last hour"
"Create a storage account with LRS in eastus" (requires read_only: false)

Deploys still happen through the CLI: the agent runs commands like func azure functionapp publish or azd deploy in Zed's terminal — that part needs the relevant CLI installed.

Limitations & honesty notes

Zed extensions cannot add buttons, panels, or palette commands — this is an agent-tools integration, not a VS Code-style Azure Tools UI.
The extension itself runs in Zed's WASM sandbox, but the spawned Azure MCP server is a native process with the same access as your shell and your az login identity. read_only: true restricts which tools are exposed.
With no namespaces filter the server exposes a very large tool list; filtering is recommended for focused work.

Development

cargo test                                    # settings → args mapping tests
cargo build --release --target wasm32-wasip1  # the actual extension build

In Zed: zed: install dev extension → select this repo's directory.