How to enable MCP Server on the IDE backend without touching UI

October 27, 2026 06:25 Updated

Question

I need to enable the MCP Server on the headless IDE backend without connecting to it and opening Settings.

Define the following VM options using JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS environment variable.

export JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS="-Didea.mcp.server.force.enable=true -Didea.mcp.server.force.port=64342"

If you use an IDE backend in Docker, you define the same environment variable in devcontainer.json.

"containerEnv": {
  "JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS": "-Didea.mcp.server.force.enable=true -Didea.mcp.server.force.port=64342"
}

You can now use the following endpoints.

http://127.0.0.1:64342/sse
http://127.0.0.1:64342/stream

To check it is working, do a quick test with curl.

curl -v --max-time 2 http://127.0.0.1:64342/stream