Databricks Field Guide by TechFabric

Databricks Field Guide MCP server

Coding agents write Databricks code from training data that's months old. The Databricks Field Guide is what TechFabric's engineers know about building, running and paying for Databricks, and its MCP server hands your agent the section that answers the question, with code that runs and the docs.databricks.com pages that section cites.

https://databricks.techfabric.com/mcp

It's a remote server over Streamable HTTP, so there's nothing to install. It's read-only, it needs no sign-in, and it's free.

Ask how to add a Unity Catalog row filter, and the agent gets the guide's section on it, the SQL function from that section and the Databricks documentation behind it. Databricks' own docs stay the authority on syntax and limits, which is why every answer links to them.

This isn't Databricks' own MCP server. Databricks runs managed MCP servers inside a workspace that act on your data. This one is built and run by TechFabric, a Databricks partner, and it never connects to a workspace.

What's in this repository

Descriptor files, so MCP directories have a repository to list. The official MCP Registry entry names this repository, and GitHub's MCP Registry shows this README in Copilot. The server's code isn't here and isn't open source.

The live server and the registry are the source of truth. If this README and the server's tools/list ever disagree, the server is right. A weekly GitHub Action compares server.json with the registry and opens a pull request when the entry has changed.

Add it to your agent

Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http databricks-field-guide https://databricks.techfabric.com/mcp

Add --scope user to have it in every project.

Claude Desktop and claude.ai

Open Customize, then Connectors, choose Add and then Add custom connector. Name it, paste https://databricks.techfabric.com/mcp, keep the authentication settings Claude detects, and choose Add. On a Team or Enterprise plan, an owner may have to add the connector for the organisation first.

ChatGPT

At chatgpt.com/plugins, choose + and then Add custom MCP server. Paste the URL under Connection, choose no authentication, and create it. In a chat, type @ and pick it. If Add custom MCP server isn't there, your workspace's admin has to turn it on.

Codex

codex mcp add databricks-field-guide --url https://databricks.techfabric.com/mcp

Or by hand, in ~/.codex/config.toml:

[mcp_servers.databricks-field-guide]
url = "https://databricks.techfabric.com/mcp"

Cursor

In ~/.cursor/mcp.json for every project, or .cursor/mcp.json for one:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "databricks-field-guide": { "url": "https://databricks.techfabric.com/mcp" }
  }
}

VS Code

In .vscode/mcp.json, then start it from that file or the MCP view. The tools show up in Copilot's agent mode.

{
  "servers": {
    "databricks-field-guide": { "type": "http", "url": "https://databricks.techfabric.com/mcp" }
  }
}

GitHub Copilot

In VS Code, use the configuration above. Copilot CLI saves the server to ~/.copilot/mcp-config.json, for every project:

copilot mcp add --transport http databricks-field-guide https://databricks.techfabric.com/mcp

Copilot's coding agent on github.com takes it in the repository's Settings, under Copilot and MCP servers. Every tool is read-only, so it can have all of them:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "databricks-field-guide": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://databricks.techfabric.com/mcp",
      "tools": ["*"]
    }
  }
}

Anything else

Point the client at the URL with the Streamable HTTP transport and no authentication. A client that only speaks stdio can reach it through mcp-remote:

npx mcp-remote https://databricks.techfabric.com/mcp

Gemini CLI and OpenCode each have their own line in the setup guide.

Tools

All seven are read-only, and none calls a model: the review and the estimate are deterministic checks against the guide's text, and your agent does the reasoning. A rule applies only while the guide still says what it cites. The rules leave out what the guide doesn't argue, such as SELECT * or collect() on their own.

Three resources come with them: fieldguide://llms.txt, one line per page; fieldguide://whats-new, the last 30 days of changes as JSON; and fieldguide://page/{+path}, any published page as Markdown. Hosts that render MCP Apps show the results as an interactive view instead of plain text: since 1.3.0 that includes the review's findings and the estimate as a table.

Prompts

Hosts that support MCP prompts show these as slash commands. In Claude Code they're /mcp__databricks-field-guide__<name>.

Chapter and section arguments complete as you type, and so does the page resource's path. MCP completes prompt arguments, not tool arguments, so these prompts are where get_chapter's chapter names complete.

Notifications

On MCP 2026-07-28 a client can subscribe with subscriptions/listen to fieldguide://whats-new or any fieldguide://page/.... When a deploy of the guide changes a subscribed resource, such as a new margin note, a rewritten chapter or a feature moving release stage, the server sends notifications/resources/updated. Clients on 2025-11-25 have no stream to push on, so they read whats_new instead.

Every answer says when its page last changed and how long a client may cache it: 10 minutes for what's new, 15 for search and an hour for chapters and code. The index is rebuilt on every deploy of the guide.

Things to ask

• "How do I add a Unity Catalog row filter? Use the Databricks Field Guide."
• "What changed in Databricks in the last two weeks?"
• "Get the Field Guide's SQL for a Unity Catalog column mask and apply it to the email column in my customers table."
• "Read the Field Guide's Lakebase chapter and tell me whether branching fits our test environments."
• "What does the Field Guide say about choosing compute to cut our Databricks bill?"
• "Review this repo's Databricks bundle against the Field Guide." Or run /mcp__databricks-field-guide__databricks-review in Claude Code.
• "Estimate what a Medium Databricks App costs running office hours, using the Field Guide's figures."
• "Check pipelines/orders.sql against the Field Guide and fix what it flags."

Sign-in, limits and privacy

There's no sign-in and no write tool. Each IP address gets 60 calls a minute and 300 an hour; past that the server answers HTTP 429 with a Retry-After header.

The server doesn't keep what you searched for or read, or the code you send to review_databricks_code. A finding that quotes a line masks any secret on it. The server's log line for a call names the tool and the protocol revision, never the arguments. It stores two things: the per-IP call count, which expires after about an hour, and one record per deploy of what changed, for notifications. It makes no outbound request. The site's privacy policy covers the rest.

It speaks MCP revision 2026-07-28, and clients still on 2025-11-25 are served on the same URL. In the official registry it's com.techfabric.databricks/field-guide.

Links

• The Databricks Field Guide
• The Field Guide MCP server's documentation: every tool, resource and limit, and the setup for each client
• The official MCP Registry entry
• The techfabric.com MCP server
• TechFabric's Databricks consulting
• Talk to an engineer

License

The files in this repository are under the Apache License 2.0, copyright Tech Fabric LLC. The Field Guide's content and the server itself aren't covered by it.