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About Alation MCP

Alation distributes its MCP server as part of an open source AI agent SDK, connecting assistants to the data catalog so answers rest on governed metadata rather than table names guessed from a schema dump. The core tools search catalog objects and return contextual detail about tables, columns, schemas, data sources and attached documentation, with a query flow tool and a SQL tool that carry that catalog context into generated queries. Beyond search, the SDK provides lineage resolution, data quality signals, data product lookups, custom field definitions and bulk retrieval of catalog objects. Which tools load is configurable, so an administrator can decide exactly how much of the catalog an assistant reaches, and organizations can surface their own agents built in Alation Agent Studio as additional MCP tools. It runs locally from a Python package in either stdio or HTTP mode, or as a remote server hosted at the /ai/mcp path on your Alation instance after a one-time authorization setup. Authentication uses service account client credentials or a bearer token, and every response respects the permissions granted to that identity. The audience is data teams, analytics engineers and stewards who want an AI assistant that cites certified sources, owners and approved definitions rather than inventing them.