OpenMetadata/openmetadata-docs/content/v1.8.x-SNAPSHOT/how-to-guides/mcp/claude.md

title	slug
Getting Started with Claude Desktop	/how-to-guides/mcp/claude

Getting Started with Claude Desktop

Configure OpenMetadata's MCP Server to interact with Antrophic's AI assistant platform.

Prerequisites

For this guide, you will need:

• nvm
• OpenMetadata v1.8.0 - You can upgrade your version of OpenMetadata with this guide
• Claude Desktop

{% youtube videoId="m96F-7gXvfo" start="0:00" end="23:05" width="800px" height="450px" /%}

Add MCP App to OpenMetadata

OpenMetadata has a variety of applications improve your data such as MetaPilot, Data Insights, Search Indexing, and MCP.

• Go to /marketplace/apps/McpApplication and select Install

{% image src="/images/v1.8/how-to-guides/mcp/install-mcp.jpg" alt="Add MCP app" caption="Install MCP Server on OpenMetadata" /%}

• The next screen, with Origin Header URI is for Streamable-Http requests. This guide uses SSE, so we can skip this portion, select Submit

Install mcp-remote

Next, we will be adding mcp-remote to Claude Desktop so we can give Claude secure access to your OpenMetadata MCP Server via support for HTTP+SSE.

• Install the latest node version

nvm install 22 && nvm alias default 22

• Install mcp-remote globally*

npm install -g mcp-remote

*Note: Installing globally may require you to run as root sudo npm install -g mcp-remote

• Start mcp-remote

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector

This will start mcp-remote's MCP Inspector on your localhost at http://127.0.0.1:6274/. Keep your terminal window open, you will see requests coming from Claude to OpenMetadata through mcp-remote in this window once you start prompting.

Adding your OpenMetadata PAT to mcp-remote

The next step will be to add your Personal Access Token (PAT) to mcp-remote so that Claude can communicate with OpenMetadata

• Go to /users//access-token and select Generate New Token. This will give Claude the same role and access policy that is assign to you in OpenMetadata, if you would like Claude to have different role-based access controls, create a new user.

{% image src="/images/v1.8/how-to-guides/mcp/generate-new-token.jpg" alt="Generate New Token" caption="Creating a new Personal Access Token" /%}

• Set your Token Expiration. This guide uses 60 days. Once your new token is created copy it.

{% image src="/images/v1.8/how-to-guides/mcp/generate-new-token-2.jpg" alt="Set Token Lifespan" caption="Personal Access Token expires in 60 days" /%}

• Paste your PAT in mcp-remote's MCP Inspector.
  • MCP Inspector URL is http://127.0.0.1:6274/
  • Transport Type is SSE
  • URL is /mcp/sse
  • Bearer Token is your PAT
  • Select Connect

{% image src="/images/v1.8/how-to-guides/mcp/mcp-inspector.jpg" alt="MCP Inspector Configuration" caption="Setting up OpenMetadata in MCP Inspector" /%}

Adding your OpenMetadata MCP Server to Claude Desktop

This how-to guide uses the free version of Claude Desktop for macOS with Sonnet 4.

• Navigate to Claude Desktop's Settings, then select Developer and Edit Config. Paste the following into claude_desktop_config.json

{"mcpServers": {
    "openmetadata": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "mcp-remote",
        "<YOUR-OpenMetadata-SERVER>/mcp/sse",
        "--auth-server-url=<YOUR-OpenMetadata-SERVER>/mcp",
        "--client-id=openmetadata",
        "--verbose",
        "--clean",
        "--header",
        "Authorization:${AUTH_HEADER}"
      ],
      "env": {
        "AUTH_HEADER": "Bearer <YOUR-OpenMetadata-PAT>
      }
    }
  }
}

• Restart Claude Desktop. You should see your openmetadata service running

{% image src="/images/v1.8/how-to-guides/mcp/claude-settings.jpg" alt="Claude Settings" caption="OpenMetadata MCP Server running in Claude Desktop" /%}

Prompt to read from OpenMetadata

This part of the guide assumes that you have assets in OpenMetadata that Claude can read, and that some of your data assets have references to customers. You can change the prompt accordingly and/or add data sources into OpenMetadata here.

Past the following prompt into Claude to have it read from OpenMetadata:

Imagine you're a data analyst tasked with building a customer retention dashboard. Can you help me identify which tables or datasets in the openmetadata database might contain relevant information?

Claude will ask if it can use the external integration openmetadata, select Allow always. You may have to do this 2 or 3 times per each request type. Claude is now reading from OpenMetadata via its MCP Server!

{% image src="/images/v1.8/how-to-guides/mcp/claude-allow.jpg" alt="Allow Claude to use OpenMetadata" caption="Claude asking for permission to search OpenMetadata" /%}

Show us what you got

With MCP, we are finding new ways to use OpenMetadata all the time! Now that you have Claude and OpenMetadata configured to work together, think you've got a great new use case? Show us what you've got in the OpenMetadata #mcp Slack Channel!