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Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a standard developed by Anthropic that enables AI assistants to seamlessly integrate with external systems. This protocol allows AI assistants to connect to data sources, APIs, databases, and more in a secure and standardized way. MCP creates a universal interface between AI models and various services, eliminating the need for custom tool implementations for each integration. You can think of it as a universal API standard designed specifically for AI systems. The key advantage of MCP is that AI libraries only need to implement support for the protocol once. After that, all MCP-compatible services become immediately accessible, saving AI library maintainers a lot of time.

What is MCP’s architecture?

MCP follows a client-server architecture:
  • Clients (like Claude Desktop, Cursor, or VS Code) establish connections with MCP servers. You can see a collection of clients in the awesome-mcp-clients GitHub repository.
  • Servers expose tools and capabilities through standardized interfaces. You can see a collection of servers in the awesome-mcp-servers GitHub repository.
  • AI models can then use these tools to access external data and functionality when needed
A diagram showing the architecture is below:

Does ClickHouse have an MCP server?

It does! The ClickHouse MCP server offers the following tools:
  • run_select_query - Execute SQL queries on your ClickHouse cluster.
  • list_databases - List all databases on your ClickHouse cluster.
  • list_tables - List all tables in a database.
If you’re looking for a remote MCP server in ClickHouse Cloud, see page “Remote MCP server in Cloud”
Agent SkillsThe ClickHouse Agent Skills repo provides packaged instructions that extend AI coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, etc.) with domain-specific expertise. This repository provides skills for ClickHouse databases—covering schema design, query optimization, and data ingestion patterns.

Guides for using the ClickHouse MCP server

Below are some guides showing how to use the ClickHouse MCP server.
Last modified on June 23, 2026