Under the hood
Project-scoped MCP servers that aren't from a plugin or env expansion now skip the allowlist check entirely.
The allowedMcpServers restriction check now short-circuits to 'allowed' for servers whose scope is a project scope and which were not expanded from an environment variable or sourced from a plugin, skipping the full allowlist matching logic in that case.
Names in the bundleallowedMcpServers
The entry above is what we published on the day. These lines were added later, as Anthropic's own pages caught up, and they sit beside the original rather than replacing it.
Added since
A small documentation edit on Control MCP server access for your organization touched a line naming allowedMcpServers after this was published.
* [Server-managed settings](/docs/en/server-managed-settings): deliver `allowedMcpServers` and `deniedMcpServers` from the claude.ai admin consolemanaged-mcp see the edit
Confirmed since
Anthropic's documentation has since written up allowedMcpServers, on All settings.
| Restriction allowlists | Takes the list whole from the highest source that sets it, without adding entries from lower sources. When the highest source doesn't set one, takes it whole from the next source down | [`availableModels`](#avail…settings-reference see the edit
Two sources agreeTwo things we can check say the same as this entry.
Anthropic's documentation agrees
Anthropic's documentation has since written up allowedMcpServers, on All settings.
Anthropic's release notes agree
Changed allowedMcpServers to govern only servers users add: a literal managed-mcp.json server your allowlist used to filter out now loads on…