MCP Overview

Understand why Decube built an MCP server, the problems it solves, and how data teams use it today.

The Decube MCP server is in experimental preview. We're iterating on it quickly based on how teams actually use it, so tools, behavior, and availability can change at short notice. We don't provide formal support for it at this stage, but we'd love to hear how it's working for you at [e-mail].

Your data team already works inside AI tools. Data engineers build and change pipelines from Claude Code and Cursor. Analysts answer business questions from Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini.

The Decube MCP (Model Context Protocol) server exposes Decube's catalog, lineage, and data quality context as tools that any MCP-compatible AI client can call directly, so your team gets Decube's trust signals at the moment they're writing a query, changing a pipeline, or building a report, not after they open a separate browser tab.

The problem

AI assistants answer data questions without the quality or lineage context Decube already has. A team ships a report on a deprecated table, or a pipeline change breaks three downstream dashboards, and the AI assistant never knew to warn them because Decube's context wasn't in reach.

This shows up differently depending on your role:

• Data engineers keep switching out of their AI tool to check a table's lineage before changing a pipeline, or skip the check entirely and break downstream dependencies they didn't know existed.

• Data analysts keep switching out of their AI tool to verify a table's freshness and quality in Decube, or skip the check entirely and build on data they haven't verified. A wrong table surfaces downstream as a broken report or a bad decision.

• Data governance stewards at regulated organizations keep catalog metadata complete by hand, asset by asset. Coverage never finishes, which is an audit risk.

• Heads of Data / CDOs at regulated organizations can't easily tell whether their oraganisation is ready to withstand scrutiny under frameworks like Indonesia's OJK or Australia's APRA CPS 230.

Common use cases

1. Find trusted data, fast.

Before an analyst builds a report, they need to know which table is the right one and whether it's fresh, complete, and free of open incidents. The MCP server answers this from inside the chat tool an analyst already uses, without a detour through the Decube UI.

"What tables do we have on customer churn, and can I trust the most recent one?"

2. Know the blast radius before you change anything.

A data engineer editing a pipeline in Cursor or Claude Code can check lineage and downstream dependencies before making a change, so they see the blast radius without leaving their editor.

"What depends on the created_at column of the sales table before I change it?"

3. Spot governance gaps systematically.

A data steward can ask their agent to surface assets with no assigned owner, open incidents, or missing classifications, turning a manual audit into a conversational query.

"Which assets have no assigned owner? Give me a prioritized list."

4. Check readiness for a compliance framework.

A Head of Data or CDO at a regulated organization can ask their agent to check the catalog against a specific regulatory framework's data expectations, such as ownership, classification, and incident coverage, and get a straight answer on how exposed they are before an audit.

"Are we ready for an OJK audit?"

5. Curate the catalog at scale, with approval built in.

A data steward can describe, tag, and assign owners across a whole schema in one instruction, with every change attributed to them and routed through their org's approval workflow where one is configured. Weeks of manual curation collapse into minutes, without losing control over what actually changes.

"Look at source X and suggest me descriptions for all tables in public schema. Let me review the suggestions. Once I approve the changes, proceed to write them for me."

Available tools

The MCP server exposes read, write, and action tools. Decube scopes every result to your existing permissions, and checks every write or action against your access before it runs.

Catalog

Tool	What it does	Type
search_assets	Search assets by name or type (fuzzy or exact)	Read
get_asset	Get full details for a specific asset	Read
count_assets	Count assets matching a filter	Read
update_asset_description	Update an asset's description	Write
assign_asset_owner	Assign a data or business owner to an asset	Write

Lineage

Tool	What it does	Type
get_lineage	Get upstream/downstream lineage for an asset	Read

Data quality

Tool	What it does	Type
get_quality_summary	Get the quality score and health summary for an asset	Read

Monitors

Tool	What it does	Type
search_monitors	Find monitors by name or asset	Read
get_monitor_details	Get a monitor's configuration	Read
get_monitor_history	Get a monitor's pass/fail history	Read
get_monitor_run_status	Check the status of a monitor run	Read
create_monitor	Create a new monitor	Write
update_monitor	Update an existing monitor's configuration	Write
run_monitor	Run a monitor on demand	Action
enable_disable_monitor	Enable or disable a monitor	Action

Incidents

Tool	What it does	Type
list_incidents_on_asset	List incidents raised on an asset	Read
list_incidents_assigned_to_user	List incidents assigned to a user	Read
get_incident_details	Get full detail on an incident	Read
get_incident_history	Get an incident's timeline	Read
update_incident	Update an incident's status, assignee, or comments	Write

Profiling

Tool	What it does	Type
get_profiling_list	List profiling runs for an asset	Read
get_profiling_result	Get the results of a profiling run	Read
trigger_profiling_run	Trigger a profiling run on an asset	Action

Governance

Tool	What it does	Type
list_custom_attributes	List custom attributes defined on assets	Read
update_custom_attribute	Update a custom attribute value on an asset	Write

Users

Tool	What it does	Type
find_user_by_email	Look up a user by email	Read
find_user_by_id	Look up a user by ID	Read
find_users_by_name	Look up users by name	Read
list_all_users	List all users in the org	Read
whoami	Return the identity of the connected user	Read

Docs

Tool	What it does	Type
search_docs	Search Decube's product documentation	Read
get_docs_page	Fetch a documentation page	Read

How writes and actions stay governed

Every write and action tool checks your access before it runs. You can only change assets and incidents you're already allowed to edit in Decube, and Decube refuses unauthorized attempts with a clear message.