Scout APM
Connect Scout APM so agents can investigate slow endpoints, traces, and errors in your app.
The Scout APM MCP server lets agents read your app's production performance data in Scout before they change the code.
For use cases and example prompts, see Scout APM for AI coding agents.
What is Scout APM?
Scout APM is an application performance monitoring tool that records response times, traces, background jobs, and errors from your production apps.
What agents can do
Once you connect Scout APM, agents can:
- List your Scout organizations and apps, and check usage for the current billing period
- Read performance metrics over time for an app, an endpoint, or a background job
- Find the slowest endpoints and jobs, and open a trace's full span tree
- Review error groups and anomaly events
- Check N+1, slow query, and memory bloat insights
Scout's MCP server is read-only, so agents can't change anything in Scout. They see only the organizations and apps the signed-in Scout user can.
Setup
Scout APM connects by signing in with your Scout account. There's no API key to create, and Scout's hosted MCP server doesn't accept Scout API keys.
Go to Workspace Settings → Connectors (or a project's Connectors page) and click Connect on the Scout APM card (or Connect another to add another account).
Step 1: who the connection is for
Choose Me or Workspace as the owner, then choose where agents can use the connection. The default is Me, with In my private chats selected. Enable In projects separately and choose All projects, including future ones or Some projects. Anyone with access to those projects can use the connection, including in sessions they launch themselves. See connection options for what each choice means.
Click Continue.
Step 2: sign in with Scout
Click Continue to Scout APM. Scout asks you to sign in if you aren't already, then shows that Superconductor will be able to read your account. Click Authorize, and you land back on the Connectors page with Scout APM connected.
If you enable In projects, anyone with access to those projects can use the signed-in user's access, so sign in with an account whose apps you're happy to share.
Reconnecting and disconnecting
If Scout stops accepting a connection, the Connectors page shows a Reconnect needed badge on it, and agents run without Scout APM.
Click Manage next to the connection, then Reconnect Scout APM. You can only reconnect a personal connection you own; for someone else's, Superconductor tells you who to ask.
Disconnect also revokes the token Superconductor is using at Scout. Scout can keep older tokens from earlier runs valid, so to remove Superconductor entirely, open your authorized applications in Scout and click Revoke next to Superconductor.
Troubleshooting
- An agent says Scout rejected its token: check the Connectors page for a Reconnect needed badge, and reconnect.
- Scout returns "You are not a member of this application's organization": the signed-in Scout user isn't in that app's organization. Add them to that organization in Scout.
When to use it
Ask agents to use Scout APM when a ticket is about something slow or failing in production. For example:
Find the slowest endpoint in Scout APM over the last 24 hours, read its slowest trace, and fix the cause.Check Scout's N+1 insights for our app and fix the one that costs the most time.Compare the response time of the orders API in Scout before and after yesterday's deploy, and tell me whether it got slower.Which background jobs got slower in Scout this week? List each one with its execution time this week and last week.