MCP reference

Use this reference to choose the tools an agent can call through MCP Gateway. The complete catalog lists 44 first-party tools from the gateway, Registry, and Atlan apps. Each tool has a reference page with its inputs, behavior, and permissions. Registered downstream MCP servers add tools specific to your account.

Set up MCP

Every client connects to the same URL, https://api.atlan.com/mcp, and signs in with your Atlan account through OAuth. Your client must support Streamable HTTP; stdio and legacy HTTP+SSE are not supported. Pick your client:

Claude Code
Codex
Cursor
VS Code
Other clients

Add the server:
claude mcp add --transport http atlan https://api.atlan.com/mcp
This adds atlan for you in the current project. Add --scope user to use it in every project.
Start Claude Code, run /mcp, select atlan, and complete the sign-in in your browser.
Run claude mcp list and confirm atlan is connected.

To approve tool calls once instead of on every call, see Connect Claude Code.

Add the server:

codex mcp add atlan --url https://api.atlan.com/mcp

Sign in:
codex mcp login atlan
Complete the sign-in in your browser.
Restart Codex so it loads the server.

To choose which calls Codex runs without asking, and to use codex exec, see Connect Codex.

Add the server to ~/.cursor/mcp.json for every project, or .cursor/mcp.json for one project:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "atlan": { "url": "https://api.atlan.com/mcp" }
  }
}

Open Customize, enable the Atlan MCP server, and complete the sign-in when prompted.

If your organization manages Cursor’s MCP policies, an administrator may need to allow the server. See Connect Cursor.

Open the Command Palette and run MCP: Add Server.
Choose HTTP, enter https://api.atlan.com/mcp, and name the server atlan.
Choose your user configuration for a personal connection, or .mcp.json to share it with the workspace.
Complete the sign-in when VS Code prompts you.
Run MCP: List Servers, select atlan, and confirm it is enabled.

See Connect Visual Studio Code.

Add the server to your client’s configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "atlan": { "type": "http", "url": "https://api.atlan.com/mcp" }
  }
}

Reconnect the server. Clients that support MCP OAuth 2.1 open the Atlan sign-in in your browser.

For agent frameworks, follow the guide for OpenAI Agents SDK, LangGraph, CrewAI, or Google ADK.

Keep tokens out of configuration files: sign-in stores the session in the client. To check the connection, ask your agent List my Atlan workspaces. and find the call under Tool calls in MCP Studio. For CI jobs and headless agents that can’t open a browser, send a bearer token instead, as described in Connect client to MCP Gateway.

Tool providers compared

Each tool name says where it comes from:

Prefix	Provider	Scope
`mcp__`	The gateway itself	Opening a session, and search mode’s five tools
`registry__`	Registry	Artifact reads and writes, relationships, account traces, and file uploads and reads
`extension__agent__`	Agent extension	Bulk agent creation, and agent, harness, or session trace reads
`extension__skill__`	Skill extension	Skill creation and skill trace reads
`extension__eval__`	Eval extension	Running scorers over traces or sessions, editing scorers, and reading stored answers
`extension__metric__`	Metric extension	Finding metric definitions and saved SQL queries in a workspace
`extension__ontology__`	Ontology extension	Bounded release context, versioned interchange, SPARQL planning, and release-pinned logical definitions with their declared physical mappings
`extension__repo__`	Repository extension	Repository registration
`<server-name>__`, such as `linear__`	A server your team registered	Whatever that server lists, refreshed by the gateway

The tool groups in this section follow the jobs an agent does: connect to Registry, find artifacts, manage artifacts, register and monitor agents, publish and monitor skills, audit runs, use ontologies, evaluate runs, find metrics, and register repositories.

Core offerings

All MCP tools

Look up every current first-party tool, and how the gateway catalogs registered servers’ tools.

Start work session

Open the session every later tool call must name.

Search mode tools

Find, describe, and run every tool through the five tools a default connection lists.

Track usage and audit

Review recorded calls, with their rationale and outcome.

Choose where to start

Managing servers from an application? The MCP category of the Public API checks what a new server needs before you register it, and lists, inspects, tests, and refreshes registered servers.
A call failed? MCP Gateway errors lists errors by symptom.

Every call runs as the signed-in identity and only reaches tools it may use. Your client’s live mcp__describe_tools result in search mode, or tools/list result in full mode, is the source of truth for callable names and input schemas, so read each tool’s description and schema before calling it, and give an agent only the tools its workflow needs. Every tool call needs a session_id and, by default, a short rationale. In search mode, the default, the first mcp__search_tools call returns the session_id; in full mode, ?tools=full, mcp__initialise does. Recorded calls include the tool, rationale, outcome, and duration, but not arguments or output. Recording is best-effort; a call can succeed even when its audit write fails. Read a write tool’s retry and partial-success rules before calling it.

App tools and downstream tools

The complete first-party catalog includes Registry, agent, skill, file, eval, ontology, metric, and repository tools. Apps with no declared MCP tools still provide their documented HTTP or product interfaces. Remote servers contribute account-specific tools. Inspect its tools with mcp__describe_tools and the server’s name in search mode, or with authenticated tools/list in full mode, after a server is connected or refreshed; the REST tools listing is a saved discovery projection and can lag the callable catalog. Skill allowed-tools metadata describes dependencies and does not register a tool.

Get started

Tool references