🗄️ sqlmate-mcp

Give Claude a database. Give yourself a GUI.

Zero-config SQL database MCP server with a live browser GUI — for Claude Code, Zed, and any MCP client.

Point it at your project, and Claude can explore your MySQL · MariaDB · SQLite · MSSQL · PostgreSQL databases while you browse, edit, and query them in a beautiful browser dashboard that updates in real time.

npm install -g sqlmate-mcp
claude mcp add --transport stdio sqlmate-mcp sqlmate-mcp

That's the whole setup. It reads your existing .env — no config files to write.

✨ Why sqlmate-mcp?

Most database MCP servers give the AI tools and leave you in the dark. sqlmate-mcp does both halves:

• 🤖 For Claude — 9 focused tools to inspect schemas, run queries, and make guarded writes.

• 👀 For you — a browser GUI (run once as a background daemon, not per session) so you can watch what the agent touches, edit data by hand, and run your own SQL side by side.

No API keys. No cloud. No node-gyp. It reads the config you already have.

Related MCP server: Database Tools for Claude AI

🚀 Features

📦 Setup

1. Install

npm install -g sqlmate-mcp

2. Register with your editor

claude mcp add --transport stdio sqlmate-mcp sqlmate-mcp

Open your Zed settings.json (Cmd/Ctrl + ,) and add:

{
  "context_servers": {
    "sqlmate-mcp": {
      "command": "sqlmate-mcp",
      "args": [],
      "env": {}
    }
  }
}

To pin a specific project's database, set SQLMATE_PROJECT_ROOT in the env block:

{
  "context_servers": {
    "sqlmate-mcp": {
      "command": "sqlmate-mcp",
      "args": [],
      "env": { "SQLMATE_PROJECT_ROOT": "/absolute/path/to/your/project" }
    }
  }
}

The sqlmate-mcp tools then appear in the Zed Agent Panel.

3. That's it

sqlmate-mcp reads connections from the root of whichever project you open (the directory you launch your editor from). Each project uses its own .env or .sqlmaterc — no global config. See Connection Setup.

🔧 Connection Setup

sqlmate-mcp reads connections from your project root at startup (defaults to cwd, override with SQLMATE_PROJECT_ROOT).

Option 1 — .env

Laravel-style variables:

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=myapp
DB_USERNAME=root
DB_PASSWORD=secret

Or a connection URL:

DATABASE_URL=mysql://root:secret@127.0.0.1:3306/myapp
DATABASE_URL=sqlite:///relative/path/app.db
DATABASE_URL=sqlserver://sa:pass@localhost:1433/master
DATABASE_URL=postgres://postgres:secret@127.0.0.1:5432/myapp

Supported schemes: mysql, mariadb, sqlite, sqlserver / mssql, pgsql / postgres / postgresql.

Option 2 — .sqlmaterc

A JSON array of connection objects in your project root:

[
  { "name": "Local MySQL", "type": "mysql", "host": "127.0.0.1", "port": 3306, "username": "root", "password": "", "database": "myapp" },
  { "name": "App SQLite", "type": "sqlite", "path": "./database/app.db" },
  { "name": "Local Postgres", "type": "postgres", "host": "127.0.0.1", "port": 5432, "username": "postgres", "password": "", "database": "myapp" }
]

A copy-paste starting point lives in docs/sqlmaterc-example.json.

🛠️ MCP Tools

run_write runs a risk assessment first. Operations affecting all rows (no WHERE), DROP, TRUNCATE, or ALTER…DROP COLUMN pause and ask Claude to confirm with confirm: true before proceeding.

dump_database is meant to be called before risky writes or migrations. The dump goes to .sqlmate/dumps/<connection>-<timestamp>.sql in your project (a .sqlmate/.gitignore keeps it out of git) and only the file path and row counts are returned to Claude. Example: "Back up the orders and customers tables, gzipped, before running this migration" → dump_database({ connectionId: "app", tables: ["orders", "customers"], gzip: true }). MySQL, Postgres and SQLite dump from a consistent snapshot; MSSQL is best-effort. Views, routines and triggers are not included (SQLite triggers are).

🖥️ Browser GUI

Available at http://localhost:4737 once the GUI daemon is running.

• 📄 Browse any table with a paginated data grid

• ✏️ Click a cell to edit it inline; delete rows with the trash icon

• 🔀 Toggle between data view and column schema view

• 💬 Run arbitrary SQL in the built-in editor, with Explain for the plan and per-query timing

• 🕸️ Visualize a database as an interactive ERD — PK/FK badges, relationship edges, click-to-open

• 🔄 Reconnect a database without restarting the server

• 📡 Watch a live feed of every MCP tool call Claude makes

🗂️ Multiple Projects, One Dashboard

Open your editor in more than one project at a time and each runs its own sqlmate-mcp process — but you only ever see one browser GUI, showing all projects at once.

• The sidebar groups connections by project (each labeled with its host/database); open tables, run SQL, and view ERDs across projects side by side. The live feed spans every project, labeled by project.

• Every MCP process is attach-only: it never binds the GUI port itself and never opens a browser tab. It just registers its connections with whatever GUI is already running and streams its tool activity into the live feed.

This means the GUI's lifetime is decoupled from any single editor session — see below.

Run the GUI as a standalone daemon

Instead of a browser tab popping up (and a new host getting elected) every time an editor session starts, run the GUI once as its own long-lived process and let every sqlmate-mcp process just attach to it:

sqlmate-mcp gui                       # start the GUI daemon, opens the browser once
sqlmate-mcp gui --install-autostart   # (Windows) start it automatically at login
sqlmate-mcp gui --uninstall-autostart # remove the login item

• If no daemon is running, an MCP process just logs a hint to stderr and keeps working without a GUI — it retries attaching in the background every 30s, so starting the daemon later (or after it restarts) picks the session back up without restarting your editor.

• Running sqlmate-mcp gui again while one is already running just opens the browser to the existing instance instead of erroring.

• --install-autostart drops a hidden startup shortcut (%APPDATA%\...\Startup\sqlmate-gui.vbs) that launches sqlmate-mcp gui at login with no visible console window. If the project lives on a drive that isn't attached yet at login (a mapped or slow-to-mount drive), it waits — checking every 3s, up to 5 minutes by default — instead of failing silently. Override with --max-wait=<seconds>, e.g. sqlmate-mcp gui --install-autostart --max-wait=60.

Fully optional — without it, sqlmate-mcp behaves as a normal attach-only client and simply runs with no GUI until you start one.

⚙️ Environment Variables

🧑‍💻 Development

git clone https://github.com/adamrpostjr/sqlmate-mcp.git
cd sqlmate-mcp
npm install
npm run build      # builds the Svelte GUI into /public

node src/index.js  # start the backend (serves the GUI at :4737)

cd frontend && npm run dev   # frontend hot-reload (proxies /api to :4737)

The frontend is Svelte 5 + Vite + Tailwind. Production build output goes to /public, served statically by Express. Backend is pure Node.js ES modules — no TypeScript, no build step.

📋 Requirements

• Node.js ≥ 22.5 (for the native node:sqlite module)

📄 License

MIT  ·  Built by Adam Post

If sqlmate-mcp saves you a trip to a database client, consider giving it a ⭐