MCP tools in the app

The MCP Tools page is the in-app home of your workspace's MCP server: everything needed to connect an agent, manage access tokens, try the seven tools against your real governed data, and read the tool contract — in four tabs: Connect, Tokens, Tools, and Reference.

Connect

The Connect tab surfaces the two things every client setup needs. First, your MCP server URL, with a copy button — the endpoint accepts POST requests with bearer authentication, and the same endpoint serves every workspace (your token selects yours). Second, ready-to-paste client config snippets for Claude Code, Cursor, and curl, prefilled with your real endpoint and a mtt_<your-access-token> placeholder to replace with a token from the Tokens tab.

The Metatate Runtime Status card reports the in-app tool surface: whether the canonical seven-tool inventory is fully registered for your workspace, the server name, the registered-tool count, and how many governed tables the current publication serves (shown as "N/A" rather than a fabricated zero when the count cannot be read). It describes in-app registration — connecting an external client always goes through the deployed endpoint.

A quick-starts card suggests the fastest first calls — decision context for a table, then discovery, then an advisory authorization — and a step-by-step guide walks through issuing a token, configuring a client, and trying calls in the workbench first. Nothing governed yet? Load the sample workspace and the quick starts answer immediately.

Tokens

Access tokens are managed here by workspace admins and owners; other members see a pointer to ask an admin instead. Issue a token with a name and an optional expiry. The value — mtt_ followed by 64 hex characters — is displayed exactly once, alongside a copy button and a prefilled Claude Code registration command; only a hash is stored, so the value can never be shown again. Each token row shows its name, display prefix, expiry, and a Active / Revoked / Expired status, with a Revoke button on active tokens. Revocation takes effect immediately for new requests, and issue/revoke events land in the workspace activity log.

Tools

The Tools tab runs real tool calls against your workspace's governed data. Results are advisory and read-only — nothing here mutates governance state.

Authorize a use is a structured surface for the most common question: pick an asset (database, schema, table, optional column), describe the proposed use, optionally add transfer context (operation, destination system and jurisdiction, consumer jurisdiction), and run. A natural-language assist box can prefill the structured fields from a sentence. The result renders as a full decision card: the typed state, the effective decision, cited instructions and policies, and publication provenance.

Workbench exercises any of the seven canonical tools. Pick a tool, fill its input — an asset picker over your governed catalog and per-tool example buttons make the JSON shape discoverable, and the input stays an editable JSON textarea — then run it. Results are explained in plain language with the raw payload one click away.

The workbench runs in two modes:

• In-app preview (default) — runs against your workspace's published state in-app, under your own member permissions. No token needed; the fastest way to iterate.
• Live endpoint — sends a real tools/call to the deployed MCP endpoint with a token you paste, the exact path an external client uses. Use it to verify a token and reproduce exactly what an agent will see.

Both modes read the same published state and share one answer model, so a call that answers in preview answers identically at the endpoint. A few capabilities — such as SQL identifier extraction for query validation — run only on the deployed endpoint; the preview says so with an explicit notice instead of guessing, and switching to live-endpoint mode covers them.

Reference

The Reference tab documents the contract in-app: how the tools work (one canonical seven-tool contract, workspace-scoped bearer auth, read-only and advisory posture, closed error codes), the Claude Code plugin install steps, the generic any-MCP-client setup, and a verbatim reference list of the seven tools. The same material, in more depth, lives in the MCP server overview and the per-tool pages such as authorize_use.

In-app testing versus a real agent

Use the Tools tab before wiring an agent: confirm your published state actually answers (a not_enough_published_state here will be the same for every client — see typed answer states), pin down the exact input shape a call needs, and verify a freshly issued token in live-endpoint mode. Then move to a real client — the Claude Code plugin or any MCP client — for end-to-end workflows, and to the cookbook for patterns worth shipping. If you are starting from zero, the quick start gets a first publication live so there is something to answer with.