mcp-data-profiler

Let an AI agent understand a dataset without reading it.

An MCP server that turns a CSV, Parquet, JSON, or Excel file into a compact structured profile — types, ranges, missing values, and likely data-quality problems — instead of raw rows.

Overview

To let an AI agent reason about a data file, you normally paste rows into the conversation. That is expensive, truncates on anything large, and still leaves the model guessing at column types and null rates.

This server answers the question directly. One tool call returns a structured summary that is orders of magnitude smaller than the data and says more about it:

The 645 MB file cannot go into a context window at any price. It is fully characterised here in under two seconds.

Related MCP server: mcp-csv-analyst

Demo

$ # in Claude Code, Claude Desktop, or any MCP client:
you:  what's in data/orders.csv?
      └─ profile_dataset(path="data/orders.csv")

5,000 rows × 6 columns, no duplicate rows.

  order_id         str      5000 distinct   ⚠ looks like an ID
  customer_region  str      4 values        AMER 1272, APAC 1257, EMEA 1250
  amount_eur       float64  2.00–1369.65    median 204.44
  currency         str      1 value         ⚠ constant ("EUR")
  ordered_at       str      5000 distinct   ⚠ dates stored as text
  notes            float64  —               ⚠ entirely null

Three real problems surfaced before any analysis began: a column that never varies, one that is entirely empty, and a date column that sorts as text — so "2024-10-01" < "2024-9-01" — silently corrupting any time-based result.

Features

• Six data-quality flags — constant, all-null, probable ID, mixed types, and numbers or dates stored as text.

• Full column statistics — dtype, null count and percentage, distinct count, sample values, quartiles for numerics, ranges for dates, frequent values for categories.

• Bounded output — the response stays small no matter how wide the input, and always reports what it truncated.

• Honest sampling — large files are sampled, but never silently; the true row count is always included.

• Five formats, eleven extensions — .csv .tsv .txt .parquet .pq .json .jsonl .ndjson .xlsx .xlsm .xls.

• Path confinement — optional --root restricts profiling to a single directory.

• Zero configuration — no database, no index, no warm-up. Point it at a file.

Architecture

flowchart LR
    A["MCP client<br/>Claude Code, Claude Desktop"]
    B["server.py<br/>MCP adapter"]
    C["profiler.py<br/>pure pandas, no MCP"]
    D[("Local files<br/>CSV, Parquet<br/>JSON, Excel")]

    A -->|"profile_dataset(path)"| B
    B -->|"validate, confine to --root"| C
    C -->|"sampled read"| D
    D -->|"DataFrame"| C
    C -->|"bounded JSON profile"| B
    B -->|"tool result"| A

All profiling logic lives in profiler.py, which imports nothing from MCP. It is unit-testable without a protocol harness and usable as an ordinary Python library. server.py is only the adapter.

Installation

Requires Python 3.10+.

pip install git+https://github.com/Ridadata/mcp-data-profiler.git

Note — a PyPI release is pending; install from GitHub until then.

Claude Code

claude mcp add data-profiler -- mcp-data-profiler

Claude Desktop and other MCP clients

Add to your client's MCP configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "data-profiler": {
      "command": "mcp-data-profiler"
    }
  }
}

To confine the server to one directory, add "args": ["--root", "/path/to/your/data"].

Usage

Once registered, ask in plain language:

• "Profile data/orders.csv"

• "Which columns have missing values?"

• "Is this dataset clean enough to model?"

Tool reference

profile_dataset(path, sample_rows=50000, max_columns=100, top_k=5, sheet=None)

Quality flags

As a Python library

from mcp_data_profiler import profile_dataset

profile = profile_dataset("data/orders.csv", sample_rows=None)
print(profile["shape"])          # {'rows_profiled': 5000, 'total_rows': 5000, 'columns': 6}
print(profile["duplicate_rows"]) # 0

Example output

Real output from data/orders.csv, abbreviated:

{
  "file": { "name": "orders.csv", "format": "csv", "size_bytes": 239846 },
  "shape": { "rows_profiled": 5000, "total_rows": 5000, "columns": 6 },
  "sampled": false,
  "columns": [
    {
      "name": "order_id",
      "dtype": "str",
      "null_count": 0,
      "null_pct": 0.0,
      "unique_count": 5000,
      "sample_values": ["ORD-000000", "ORD-000001", "ORD-000002"],
      "flags": ["high_cardinality_possible_id"]
    },
    {
      "name": "amount_eur",
      "dtype": "float64",
      "null_count": 0,
      "null_pct": 0.0,
      "unique_count": 4755,
      "stats": {
        "min": 2.0, "max": 1369.65, "mean": 244.54278, "std": 170.805364,
        "q25": 118.98, "median": 204.435, "q75": 331.065
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "currency",
      "dtype": "str",
      "unique_count": 1,
      "top_values": [{ "value": "EUR", "count": 5000 }],
      "flags": ["constant"]
    }
  ],
  "duplicate_rows": 0
}

When a file is sampled, the profile also carries "sampled": true, the true total_rows, and a sampling_note saying so.

Design notes

Bounded output. The tool must cost less than the data it describes, so the response is capped regardless of input width and long strings are truncated. Near-unique columns skip the frequent-values list, since every count would be 1.

Honest sampling. Large files are profiled from a sample, but the result always carries "sampled": true alongside the true row count — a silently sampled statistic is a wrong statistic. Row counts come from Parquet metadata or a newline scan, never a full read.

No silent wrong answers. The same rule governs every default that could mislead. A workbook's first sheet is often a title page, so Excel profiles always name the sheet used and list the others rather than reporting an untouched sheet as a clean dataset. CSV delimiters are inferred by testing candidates for a stable column count, which handles the semicolon files common in European open data without the header-mangling that character-frequency sniffers cause.

Path safety. --root confines profiling to one directory. Paths are canonicalised before the check, so .. and symlinks cannot escape it.

Limitations

• Read-only, local files. No databases, no URLs, no writes.

• Sampled by default. Statistics reflect the first 50,000 rows unless you pass sample_rows=null.

• Row-oriented. No cross-column correlations, outlier detection, or plots.

• pandas parsing rules apply. The profile shows what pandas sees, which is what your own code will see. Notably "NA", "N/A", and "None" are read as missing, so a region column containing "NA" for North America will report nulls. That trap is surfaced, not hidden.

• Nested JSON is not flattened. Unhashable cells make the duplicate check inapplicable, and it is reported as null.

• One Excel sheet per call. The profile names the sheet read and lists the rest; pass sheet to switch.

Development

git clone https://github.com/Ridadata/mcp-data-profiler.git
cd mcp-data-profiler
pip install -e ".[dev]"

pytest                                  # 36 tests
ruff check src tests demo.py            # lint
ruff format --check src tests demo.py   # formatting
python demo.py                          # profile sample files locally

CI runs the suite on Python 3.10–3.13 (Linux) plus Windows and macOS, and performs a real stdio handshake against the built server to confirm it starts and advertises its tool.

Releasing

Publishing to PyPI is automated via Trusted Publishing, so no API token is stored in this repository. Publishing a GitHub Release triggers .github/workflows/release.yml, which builds the distributions, verifies the built wheel actually installs and imports, and uploads it.

Issues and pull requests are welcome.

Roadmap

• Publish to PyPI and the official MCP registry

• Cross-column correlation summary for numeric features

• Optional full-file exact mode with progress reporting

• Multi-sheet Excel profiling in a single call

• Gzip and remote (s3://, https://) sources

License

MIT © Rida Aderkane