Connect Trino to AI Assistants

Trino MCP Server in Go

A high-performance Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for Trino implemented in Go. This project enables AI assistants to seamlessly interact with Trino's distributed SQL query engine through standardized MCP tools.

Overview

This project implements a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for Trino in Go. It enables AI assistants to access Trino's distributed SQL query engine through standardized MCP tools.

Trino (formerly PrestoSQL) is a powerful distributed SQL query engine designed for fast analytics on large datasets.

Architecture

graph TB
    subgraph "AI Clients"
        CC[Claude Code]
        CD[Claude Desktop]
        CR[Cursor]
        WS[Windsurf]
        CW[ChatWise]
    end
    
    subgraph "Authentication (Optional)"
        OP[OAuth Provider<br/>Okta/Google/Azure AD]
        JWT[JWT Tokens]
    end
    
    subgraph "MCP Server (mcp-trino)"
        HTTP[HTTP Transport<br/>/mcp endpoint]
        STDIO[STDIO Transport]
        AUTH[OAuth Middleware]
        TOOLS[MCP Tools<br/>• execute_query<br/>• list_catalogs<br/>• list_schemas<br/>• list_tables<br/>• get_table_schema<br/>• explain_query]
    end
    
    subgraph "Data Layer"
        TRINO[Trino Cluster<br/>Distributed SQL Engine]
        CATALOGS[Data Sources<br/>• PostgreSQL<br/>• MySQL<br/>• S3/Hive<br/>• BigQuery<br/>• MongoDB]
    end
    
    %% Connections
    CC -.->|OAuth Flow| OP
    OP -.->|JWT Token| JWT
    
    CC -->|HTTP + JWT| HTTP
    CD -->|STDIO| STDIO
    CR -->|HTTP + JWT| HTTP
    WS -->|STDIO| STDIO
    CW -->|HTTP + JWT| HTTP
    
    HTTP --> AUTH
    AUTH -->|Validated| TOOLS
    STDIO --> TOOLS
    
    TOOLS -->|SQL Queries| TRINO
    TRINO --> CATALOGS
    
    %% Styling
    classDef client fill:#e1f5fe
    classDef auth fill:#f3e5f5
    classDef server fill:#e8f5e8
    classDef data fill:#fff3e0
    
    class CC,CD,CR,WS,CW client
    class OP,JWT auth
    class HTTP,STDIO,AUTH,TOOLS server
    class TRINO,CATALOGS data

Key Components:

• AI Clients: Various MCP-compatible applications
• Authentication: Optional OAuth 2.0 with OIDC providers
• MCP Server: Go-based server with dual transport support
• CLI Mode: Interactive SQL shell for direct Trino access (psql-like)
• Data Layer: Trino cluster connecting to multiple data sources

Features

• ✅ Dual Mode: Works as both MCP server AND interactive CLI
  • CLI Mode: psql-like interactive SQL shell for direct Trino access
  • MCP Mode: Full MCP server for AI assistant integration
• ✅ MCP server implementation in Go
• ✅ Trino SQL query execution through MCP tools
• ✅ Catalog, schema, and table discovery
• ✅ Docker container support
• ✅ Supports both STDIO and HTTP transports
• ✅ OAuth 2.1 authentication via oauth-mcp-proxy library
  • 4 Providers: HMAC, Okta, Google, Azure AD
  • Native mode: Client handles OAuth directly (zero server-side secrets)
  • Proxy mode: Server proxies OAuth flow for simple clients
  • Production-ready: Token caching, PKCE, defense-in-depth security
  • Reusable: OAuth library available for any Go MCP server
• ✅ StreamableHTTP support with JWT authentication (upgraded from SSE)
• ✅ Backward compatibility with SSE endpoints
• ✅ Compatible with Cursor, Claude Desktop, Windsurf, ChatWise, and any MCP-compatible clients.
• ✅ User Identity Tracking:
  • Query Attribution (automatic): Tags queries with OAuth user via X-Trino-Client-Tags/Info headers
  • User Impersonation (opt-in): Execute queries as OAuth user via X-Trino-User header

Installation & Quick Start

Install:

# Homebrew
brew install tuannvm/mcp/mcp-trino

# Or one-liner (macOS/Linux)
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tuannvm/mcp-trino/main/install.sh | bash

Run (Local Development):

export TRINO_HOST=localhost TRINO_USER=trino
mcp-trino

For production deployment with OAuth, see Deployment Guide and OAuth Architecture.

CLI Mode

mcp-trino can be used as an interactive CLI similar to psql or the Trino CLI:

# Interactive REPL mode
mcp-trino --interactive

# Execute a query directly
mcp-trino query "SELECT * FROM my_table LIMIT 10"

# List catalogs, schemas, tables
mcp-trino catalogs
mcp-trino schemas my_catalog
mcp-trino tables my_catalog my_schema

# Describe a table
mcp-trino describe my_catalog.my_schema.my_table

# Explain a query
mcp-trino explain "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM my_table"

# Output formats
mcp-trino --format json query "SELECT 1"
mcp-trino --format csv query "SELECT 1"
mcp-trino --format table query "SELECT 1"  # default

Built-in Help

Every command has structured, LLM-friendly help output:

# Main help with all commands, flags, examples, and environment variables
mcp-trino --help

# Per-subcommand help
mcp-trino query --help
mcp-trino describe --help

Help output follows Unix man-page conventions with sections: NAME, SYNOPSIS, DESCRIPTION, COMMANDS, FLAGS, EXAMPLES, ENVIRONMENT, and CONFIGURATION.

Exit Codes

Named Profiles

mcp-trino supports named connection profiles for easy switching between Trino environments.

Configuration File - supports both YAML (~/.config/trino/config.yaml) and JSON (~/.config/trino/config.json):

# ~/.config/trino/config.yaml
current: prod

profiles:
  prod:
    host: trino.example.com
    port: 443
    user: prod_user
    password: prod_password
    catalog: hive
    schema: analytics
    ssl:
      enabled: true
      insecure: false

  dev:
    host: localhost
    port: 8080
    user: trino
    catalog: memory
    schema: default

  staging:
    host: staging-trino.example.com
    port: 443
    user: staging_user

output:
  format: table

Or equivalently in JSON:

{
  "current": "prod",
  "profiles": {
    "prod": {
      "host": "trino.example.com",
      "port": 443,
      "user": "prod_user",
      "catalog": "hive",
      "ssl": { "enabled": true }
    },
    "dev": {
      "host": "localhost",
      "port": 8080,
      "user": "trino"
    }
  },
  "output": { "format": "table" }
}

When both files exist, config.json takes precedence. New configs default to JSON.

Profile Management Commands:

# List all profiles
mcp-trino config profile list

# Set default profile
mcp-trino config profile use prod

# Show profile details
mcp-trino config profile show staging

# Use a specific profile (overrides config file)
mcp-trino --profile dev catalogs

Configuration Precedence (highest to lowest):

1. CLI flags (--host, --port, etc.)
2. --profile flag
3. TRINO_PROFILE environment variable
4. current field in config file
5. default profile fallback
6. Environment variables (TRINO_HOST, etc.)

Environment Variables (lowest priority - overridden by profiles and flags):

export TRINO_HOST=trino.example.com
export TRINO_PORT=443
export TRINO_USER=myuser
export TRINO_PASSWORD=mypass
export TRINO_CATALOG=hive
export TRINO_SCHEMA=analytics
export TRINO_SSL=true

Secret Management (recommended):

Secrets are loaded purely from environment variables. Use a secrets CLI to inject them via Unix piping at launch time - the app never touches your vault:

# 1Password CLI — resolves op:// references in an env file
op run --env-file=.env -- mcp-trino

# Or inline per-variable
TRINO_PASSWORD=$(op read 'op://Engineering/Trino/password') mcp-trino

See docs/secrets.md for 1Password, Vault, and Kubernetes patterns, and for security nuances (shell-history, process-list, and env-var leakage).

REPL Meta-Commands (in interactive mode):

• \help - Show help
• \quit, \exit, \q - Exit REPL
• \history - Show command history
• \catalogs - List all catalogs
• \schemas [catalog] - List schemas
• \tables [catalog schema] - List tables
• \describe <table> - Describe table
• \format <table|json|csv> - Change output format

Usage

Supported Clients: Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, ChatWise

Available Tools: execute_query, list_catalogs, list_schemas, list_tables, get_table_schema, explain_query

For client integration and tool documentation, see Integration Guide and Tools Reference.

Configuration

Key Variables: TRINO_HOST, TRINO_USER, TRINO_SCHEME, MCP_TRANSPORT, OAUTH_PROVIDER

Secret Management: Inject secrets through the process environment - mcp-trino reads them directly. See docs/secrets.md for 1Password, Vault, and Kubernetes recipes.

# 1Password (biometric-gated, zero disk writes)
op run --env-file=.env -- mcp-trino

# Vault (via vault-agent or CLI)
TRINO_PASSWORD=$(vault kv get -field=password secret/mcp-trino) mcp-trino

# Kubernetes: use standard Secret → envFrom in the Helm chart values

OAuth Configuration:

# Native mode (most secure - zero server-side secrets)
export OAUTH_ENABLED=true OAUTH_MODE=native OAUTH_PROVIDER=okta
export OIDC_ISSUER=https://company.okta.com OIDC_AUDIENCE=https://mcp-server.com

# Proxy mode (centralized credential management)
export OAUTH_MODE=proxy OIDC_CLIENT_ID=app-id OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET=secret
export OAUTH_REDIRECT_URI=https://mcp-server.com/oauth/callback  # Fixed mode (localhost-only)
export OAUTH_REDIRECT_URI=https://app1.com/cb,https://app2.com/cb  # Allowlist mode
export JWT_SECRET=$(openssl rand -hex 32)  # Required for multi-pod deployments

Performance Optimization:

# Focus AI on specific schemas only (10-20x performance improvement)
export TRINO_ALLOWED_SCHEMAS="hive.analytics,hive.marts,hive.reporting"

User Identity Tracking:

# Query Attribution is AUTOMATIC when OAuth is enabled
# Queries are tagged with X-Trino-Client-Tags and X-Trino-Client-Info headers

# For full impersonation (Trino enforces user permissions):
export TRINO_ENABLE_IMPERSONATION=true
export TRINO_IMPERSONATION_FIELD=email  # Options: username, email, subject

For complete configuration, see Deployment Guide, OAuth Guide, Allowlists Guide, and User Identity Guide.

OAuth Implementation

mcp-trino uses oauth-mcp-proxy - a standalone OAuth 2.1 library for Go MCP servers.

Why a separate library?

• ✅ Reusable across any Go MCP server
• ✅ Independent testing and versioning
• ✅ Dedicated documentation and examples
• ✅ Community-maintained OAuth implementation

For OAuth details:

• oauth-mcp-proxy Documentation - Complete OAuth guide
• Provider Setup Guides - Okta, Google, Azure AD
• Security Best Practices - Production security

Related Projects

• oauth-mcp-proxy - OAuth 2.1 authentication library used by mcp-trino (reusable for any Go MCP server)

CI/CD and Releases

This project uses GitHub Actions for continuous integration and GoReleaser for automated releases.

Continuous Integration Checks

Our CI pipeline performs the following checks on all PRs and commits to the main branch:

Code Quality

• Linting: Using golangci-lint to check for common code issues and style violations
• Go Module Verification: Ensuring go.mod and go.sum are properly maintained
• Formatting: Verifying code is properly formatted with gofmt

Security

• Vulnerability Scanning: Using govulncheck to check for known vulnerabilities in dependencies
• Dependency Scanning: Using Trivy to scan for vulnerabilities in dependencies (CRITICAL, HIGH, and MEDIUM)
• SBOM Generation: Creating a Software Bill of Materials for dependency tracking
• SLSA Provenance: Creating verifiable build provenance for supply chain security

Testing

• Unit Tests: Running tests with race detection and code coverage reporting
• Build Verification: Ensuring the codebase builds successfully

CI/CD Security

• Least Privilege: Workflows run with minimum required permissions
• Pinned Versions: All GitHub Actions use specific versions to prevent supply chain attacks
• Dependency Updates: Automated dependency updates via Dependabot

Release Process

When changes are merged to the main branch:

1. CI checks are run to validate code quality and security
2. If successful, a new release is automatically created with:
   • Semantic versioning based on commit messages
   • Binary builds for multiple platforms
   • Docker image publishing to GitHub Container Registry
   • SBOM and provenance attestation