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Set up Jira MCP in Cursor to manage Jira tickets directly from your IDE using natural language.

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Prerequisites

  • Cursor IDE installed
  • Jira MCP installed (see Quickstart)
  • jira-cli configured and authenticated

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Configuration

1

Open MCP settings

In Cursor, go to Settings > MCP or open the command palette and search for “MCP”.
2

Add Jira MCP server

Add the following configuration to your MCP servers:
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "jira": {
      "command": "/usr/local/bin/jira-mcp"
    }
  }
}
Replace /usr/local/bin/jira-mcp with the actual path to your jira-mcp binary.
3

Restart Cursor

Restart Cursor or reload the window to apply the changes.

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Usage examples

Once configured, you can interact with Jira using natural language in Cursor:
  • “Show me my assigned tickets”
  • “Create a bug ticket for the login page issue”
  • “Move PROJ-123 to In Progress”
  • “Add a comment to PROJ-456 explaining the fix”
  • “What tickets are in the current sprint?”

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Troubleshooting

  1. Verify the path to your jira-mcp binary is correct.
  2. Make sure jira-cli is properly configured by running jira issue list in your terminal.
  3. Check Cursor’s MCP logs for error messages.
Ensure your Jira credentials are set in your shell environment:
export JIRA_API_KEY="your-api-key"
export JIRA_AUTH_TYPE="basic"
Then restart Cursor to pick up the environment variables.