Generate an MCP config for a Google Sheet

What this generates

It checks that the sheet you pasted is readable, then writes out the MCP server config for Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code and Claude Code, and tells you which file each block goes in. The shapes genuinely differ — VS Code nests the server under a servers key, Cursor and Claude use mcpServers — and getting it wrong fails silently, with the client simply showing no tools.

Be clear about one thing: the config points at an endpoint URL, and that endpoint is created when you connect the sheet to PasteSheet. The generator fills in everything except the endpoint id, which is why the URL below carries a placeholder. Creating the endpoint is free and takes about a minute — no credit card, and MCP is on the Free plan.

What the AI can do once connected

The server exposes three read-only tools, and the agent decides when to call them:

• list_tabs — discover the tabs in the sheet and which is the default.
• get_schema — read each column's name, alias and inferred type before querying.
• query_rows — read rows with exact-match filters, partial matches, full-text search, sorting and pagination.

It is read-only, and that is the point

The connection can query your sheet and can never modify it. There is no write tool to misuse and no scope that grants one, so handing the server to an agent is a bounded decision rather than a leap of faith.

It also needs no Google Cloud project, no OAuth consent screen and no service-account JSON. That is the entire setup burden of Google's own API, and it is the reason most people give up on connecting a spreadsheet to an agent. Here you paste a share URL.

Why an agent needs a cached endpoint

Agents are chatty. One exploring a question does not read a sheet once — it lists tabs, checks the schema, then fires several filtered queries in a row. Pointed straight at Google, that burns quota fast: the Sheets API allows 300 reads per minute per project and only 60 per minute per user before it starts returning 429.

A PasteSheet endpoint reads the sheet once, caches the rows, and serves every subsequent tool call from that cache — so the agent's tenth query costs Google nothing. See the MCP guide for the full walkthrough, or the Claude and Cursor guides for per-client steps.

What a live endpoint costs

Nothing, to start. The Free plan gives you 3 endpoints and 2,000 requests a month, with MCP included and no credit card. The tool above stays free and unlimited either way.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Model Context Protocol specification — Model Context Protocol
• Installing and using an MCP server — Anthropic
• Model Context Protocol — Cursor docs — Cursor
• Use MCP servers in VS Code — Microsoft
• Usage limits — Google Sheets API — Google

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