Integrate Tiger Cloud with your AI Assistant (MCP and CLI)

Install Tiger CLI, set up Tiger MCP, and manage Tiger Cloud resources from Claude, Cursor, and other AI assistants

Tiger MCP gives your AI assistant access to Tiger Cloud so you can manage services and query your data using natural language.

Tiger MCP is built into the Tiger CLI binary. It mirrors CLI functionality and is wired to Tiger Data documentation, so your AI assistant can answer questions with up-to-date guidance. This page walks you through installing Tiger CLI, configuring authentication for Tiger MCP, and managing Tiger Cloud resources from your AI assistant.

To follow these steps, you'll need:

A Tiger Cloud account.

An AI assistant installed on your machine with an active API key.

The following AI assistants are automatically configured by Tiger MCP:
Support for additional clients is added over time; if yours isn't listed, use manual configuration below.

Install and configure Tiger MCP

Tiger MCP is bundled with Tiger CLI.

Install the Tiger CLI
In a terminal, install the CLI using the method for your platform (see Get started with the command line for the latest install command).
Set up API credentials
1. Log in to Tiger Cloud
  
  Run:
  Terminal window
  tiger auth login
  Tiger CLI opens the browser for Console. Log in and click Authorize.
  
  Credential limit
  
  You can have a maximum of 10 active client credentials. If login fails, open credentials and remove an unused credential.
2. Select a Tiger Cloud project
  
  If you have multiple projects, the CLI will prompt you to choose one (for example, Tiger Project, company-wide project, or department project). If you have only one project, this step is skipped.
  
  Credentials are stored in the system keychain (or credential manager) when possible. If that fails, they are stored in ~/.config/tiger/credentials with restricted permissions (600). Configuration is stored by default in ~/.config/tiger/config.yaml.
3. Confirm the connection
  
  List services to verify authentication:
  Terminal window
  tiger service list
  You'll see either an empty list with a prompt to create a service, or a table of your services (service ID, name, status, type, region, created).
Install Tiger MCP
Run:
Terminal window
tiger mcp install
Choose the MCP client to integrate with (for example, claude-code, cursor, windsurf, codex, gemini-cli, vscode) and press Enter.

CLI and Tiger MCP commands

The exact list of clients and subcommands (for example, tiger mcp install, tiger mcp list) can change with new CLI releases. If a command fails, run tiger mcp --help.

After this, you can use Tiger MCP from your AI assistant to manage Tiger Cloud.

Manage Tiger Cloud from your AI assistant

Once connected, you can manage services and learn best practices through your assistant.

Start your AI assistant
(For example, claude). It will start the Tiger MCP server and connect to Tiger Cloud.
Confirm Tiger MCP is active
Ask: "Is the Tiger MCP server active?" You should see a summary of available tools (service management, database operations, documentation search, skills for hypertables, and others).
List services
Ask: "Can you list my active services?" to see your Tiger Cloud services.
Manage services in plain language
For example: "Create a new AI service called bob with a replica." The assistant will use Tiger MCP tools to create the service.
Get best practices
For example: "I need to migrate a database with 25 million rows to Tiger Cloud; what service optimizations should I do before migration?" The assistant can use docs and tools to give tailored advice.

Restrict Tiger MCP to read-only

If you want your AI assistant to explore and query services without changing anything, enable read-only mode:

tiger config set read_only true

When read-only mode is on:

Mutating Tiger MCP tools and CLI commands (service create, fork, start, stop, resize, update-password, and delete) are refused with an error.
The database sessions opened by the db_execute_query tool, tiger db connect, and tiger db connection-string run in Tiger Cloud's immutable read-only mode, so writes and schema changes (DDL) are rejected by the server.
Read tools and commands, such as listing services or running SELECT queries, are unaffected.

To set read-only mode for a single session without changing your saved configuration, set the TIGER_READ_ONLY environment variable instead:

TIGER_READ_ONLY=true tiger mcp start

To turn read-only mode back off, run tiger config unset read_only.

Manually configure Tiger MCP

If your MCP client isn't supported by tiger mcp install, add Tiger MCP manually. Many clients use a JSON config that starts the server with tiger mcp start:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tiger": {
      "command": "tiger",
      "args": ["mcp", "start"]
    }
  }
}

Config key names (for example, mcpServers) and structure depend on your client. See your AI assistant's MCP documentation for the exact format and where to place the file.

Reference

For the full list of Tiger MCP tools and tiger mcp commands, see the Tiger MCP reference. For every CLI command, configuration parameter, and global flag, see the Tiger CLI reference.