Genie One MCP server

Important

This feature is in Beta. Workspace admins can control access to this feature from the Previews page. See Manage Azure Databricks previews.

The Genie One MCP server is a Azure Databricks managed MCP server that exposes Genie as a conversational tool over the Model Context Protocol (MCP), leveraging Chat in Genie One. An MCP client or agent sends a natural-language question, and Genie searches your enterprise data, writes SQL, and returns an answer grounded in Genie Ontology with deep links back to your cited Azure Databricks sources.

Connect any MCP client or agent to ground its data questions in Genie's trusted insights. Clients that support MCP Apps can render an interactive View that shows Genie's progress, visualizations, and results inline.

Unity Catalog permissions are always enforced, so users and agents can only query data they're allowed to access.

Note

The Genie One MCP server answers questions across your workspace data using Chat in Genie One and is served at the path /api/2.0/mcp/genie. It's distinct from the per-agent Genie server at /api/2.0/mcp/genie/{genie_space_id}, which queries a single Genie Agent. See Azure Databricks managed MCP servers for the per-agent server.

Enable the Genie One MCP server

The Genie One MCP server requires the Managed MCP Servers workspace preview. A workspace admin enables it as follows:

1. As a workspace admin, click your username in the top bar of the Azure Databricks workspace.
2. From the menu, select Previews.
3. Search for and turn on Managed MCP Servers.

For more about managing previews, see Manage Azure Databricks previews.

Endpoint and authentication

The Genie One MCP server is available at the following URL.

https://<workspace-hostname>/api/2.0/mcp/genie

Connecting to the Genie One MCP server is like connecting to any other Azure Databricks managed MCP server: requests must be authenticated to your workspace. When connecting with on-behalf-of user authentication, include the genie OAuth scope. See Connect clients using OAuth authentication for setup instructions, and Connect MCPs to AI assistants and coding agents to connect clients such as Cursor and Claude Desktop.

Available tools

The Genie One MCP server exposes the following tools. In practice, an agent invokes genie_ask (or view_ask on MCP Apps clients) to ask a question; the agent manages the remaining tools on your behalf as it works through the response.

Tool	Description
genie_ask	Ask Genie a natural-language data question and start a response. Returns conversation_id, response_id, and status. Pass a conversation_id to continue a previous conversation.
genie_poll_response	Fetch the latest state of an in-flight or completed response, including progress steps, the final answer, and deep links to your Azure Databricks sources.
genie_get_query_result	Fetch the full SQL result — column schema and rows — for a query Genie ran.
genie_cancel_response	Request cancellation of an in-flight Genie turn.
view_ask	Ask Genie a question and open the interactive View. Offered instead of genie_ask to MCP Apps clients, and preferred when available.

Ask a question

Because Genie runs an agent that searches data and executes SQL, answers are asynchronous. You (or your agent) invoke genie_ask with a question; the agent then manages the rest of the exchange automatically. A typical flow looks like this:

1. genie_ask starts the response and returns a conversation_id and response_id with status: in_progress. Genie continues working in the background.
2. The agent polls genie_poll_response until the response completes, surfacing progress_steps and a narration_instruction along the way to keep you informed.
3. When status is completed (or incomplete / failed), the agent returns the rendered answer, including an Explore in Azure Databricks deep link to the full conversation and any visualizations Genie produced.

To continue the same conversation, the follow-up question reuses the previous conversation_id.

MCP App

The Genie One MCP server provides an MCP App, an extension that lets a server return an interactive view instead of plain text. On clients that support MCP Apps, the server returns an interactive View: a panel embedded in the client that shows Genie's progress, visualizations, and final answer as the conversation unfolds, rather than a text-only reply.

The Genie One MCP App rendering a bar chart, summary metrics, and Genie Ontology citations inside Claude Desktop.

No additional setup is required. Clients that support MCP Apps automatically get the interactive View. Clients that don't continue to receive text results.

Considerations

• Permissions: Unity Catalog permissions are enforced on every request, so results are scoped to what the user can access.
• Configuration: The server honors your Genie One configuration in Azure Databricks. Tune and configure Genie's behavior there. See Chat in Genie One.
• Polling cadence: Wait for the prior genie_poll_response call to complete before polling again.
• Result size: To protect the model's context window, genie_ask and genie_poll_response return truncated query results. When an agent needs the complete result, it can call genie_get_query_result to retrieve the full schema and rows. Very large results are still subject to a size limit; if it's exceeded, the response is truncated.
• Pricing: The Genie One MCP server uses Chat in Genie One. See Genie pricing.

Connect to the Genie One MCP server

The Genie One MCP server is one of the Azure Databricks managed MCP servers. To connect external clients such as Cursor or Claude Desktop, or to build an agent that calls the server, see Connect MCPs to AI assistants and coding agents.

To view your MCP servers and their endpoint URLs, go to your workspace and select Agents > MCPs.