AWS Partner Network (APN) Blog
Enhancing code quality at scale with SonarQube and Amazon Q Developer
By: Manish Kapur, Sr. Director, Product & Solutions Marketing – Sonar
By: Patrick Madec, AWS Senior Solutions Architect – AWS
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| Sonar |
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Enterprise development teams face a critical challenge as they accelerate software delivery through AI-powered tools: maintaining rigorous code quality and security standards without sacrificing development velocity. Accessing critical code quality and security intelligence when using AI coding requires leaving the conversational workflow. This constant context-switching breaks developer focus and undermines the seamless experience AI is meant to deliver. In this post, we describe a modern approach that doesn’t compromise on speed.
Shifting left
Organizations already using Amazon Q Developer, the Amazon Web Services (AWS) AI coding-assistant named as a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant, can address this challenge with SonarQube MCP Server. This integration performs real-time code quality analysis directly within AI development workflows. It demonstrates how the Model Context Protocol (MCP) connects AI agents, such as Amazon Q, with specialized tools to accelerate development without compromising security or quality standards.
As a result, using the SonarQube MCP Server, developers can analyze and fix code issues directly within their Amazon Q development workflow. The solution delivers immediate feedback on code quality and security, suggests generic remediation and Amazon Q Developer can then fix the code based on those findings.
The goal is to identify and resolve potential vulnerabilities and defects earlier in the development lifecycle (the shift left), when these issues are less expensive to fix.
The integration in action
The SonarQube MCP Server exposes analysis capabilities through tools such as analyze_code_snippet, which developers can use to identify code quality and security issues directly within the Amazon Q Developer chat interface. This reduces context switching by providing real-time feedback, project information, and remediation guidance within the AI coding environment.
As shown in Figure 1, developers can ensure high code quality and detect security issues directly in the integrated development environment (IDE) early in the development process. This proactive approach prevents issues from propagating downstream and reduces the cost of fixing problems later in the development cycle.
Figure 1: Developer workflow with real-time quality feedback
Business benefits and technical impact
The SonarQube MCP Server integration with Amazon Q Developer delivers clear benefits across the board:
- For developers: Improved productivity through real-time feedback and dramatically reduced context switching.
- For platform engineers: Eliminates the need to build and maintain brittle, custom integrations, so they can focus on high-value platform work.
- For leadership: Consistent, scalable quality standards are finally achievable.
- For the organization: A faster time-to-market and an enhanced security posture thanks to integrated analysis that scales with your teams.
A transformation story: Development at scale
Consider how this integration transforms the daily workflow of enterprise development teams. Previously, developers would write code with AI assistance, then switch to separate quality tools for analysis, potentially discovering issues that required returning to the development environment for fixes. This cycle created friction and reduced the effectiveness of AI-powered development.
With the SonarQube MCP Server integration, developers receive immediate quality feedback within their Amazon Q Developer workflow. Issues are identified and remediation suggestions provided inline, creating continuous quality improvement without workflow disruption. This approach represents a fundamental shift from reactive quality assurance to proactive quality management.
Getting started
The SonarQube MCP Server is available as a free, source-available project on GitHub that organizations can deploy locally. It connects to SonarQube Cloud, which is available in AWS Marketplace. For information about SonarQube solutions, visit sonarsource.com.
Sonar – AWS Partner Spotlight
Sonar is an AWS Advanced Technology Partner and AWS DevOps Competency Partner. SonarQube provides continuous inspection of code quality across more than 35 programming languages and frameworks, helping organizations maintain security and reliability standards at scale.