Datanika Core
🎖️ 🐍 ☁️ 🏠 - Read-only-by-default MCP server for Datanika, the open-source ELT + dbt platform: browse connections, preview data, run and compile dbt transforms, monitor runs, and manage pipelines. 25 tools; opt-in --allow-write enables create/trigger.
Quick Install
{
"mcpServers": {
"datanika-io-datanika-core": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"datanika-io-datanika-core"
]
}
}
}Using an AI coding agent (Claude Code, Cursor, etc.)? Copy a ready-made prompt that tells it to fetch the setup instructions and install this server for you.
Documentation Overview
Datanika
Open-source data pipeline platform — Extract, Load, Transform, and Orchestrate from a single UI.
Datanika combines dlt (extract + load) with dbt-core (transform) and adds visual pipeline management, scheduling, and monitoring — all in one Python-native platform.
Think Airbyte + dbt Cloud + Airflow — in one tool, self-hostable with Docker Compose.
Features
🔌 36 Connectors — PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, MongoDB, BigQuery, Snowflake, Stripe, HubSpot, Salesforce, Kafka, S3, and more
🔄 dbt Transformations — SQL models, tests, snapshots, packages, and source freshness built in
📊 Visual Pipeline Builder — DAG editor with dependency management
⏰ Scheduling — Cron-based with APScheduler, persistent across restarts
📈 Monitoring — Run history, streaming logs, and dashboard stats
🔐 Enterprise Security — RBAC, SSO (SAML/OIDC), audit logging, encrypted credentials
🌍 9 Languages — English, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Greek, Chinese, Arabic, Serbian
🔌 REST API — Full CRUD with OpenAPI/Swagger docs, rate limiting, and scoped API keys
🤖 AI-Agent Ready — hosted + local MCP server (25 tools), /llms.txt, agent-guide.md, 5-tier capability API, compile+preview validation, typed error codes, ?wait=true, Idempotency-Key, run cancellation
🚀 Pipeline Templates — One-click starter templates (Stripe→Postgres, Postgres→BigQuery, CSV→DuckDB) with prefilled connection configs
🔔 Notifications — Slack, Telegram, email, and webhook alerts on run completion, plus an in-app notification center
📦 Self-Hostable — Single docker compose up — no Kubernetes required
Quick Start
Docker (recommended)
git clone https://github.com/datanika-io/datanika-core.git
cd datanika-core
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env with your settings
docker compose up -d
App available at http://localhost:3000
Development
uv venv && source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install -e ".[dev]"
docker compose up -d postgres redis # infrastructure only
uv run reflex run # starts on :3000 + :8000
Releases & versioning
Datanika uses 0.x SemVer with tagged releases (v0.1.0, …). While pre-1.0, breaking
changes bump the minor. There is no 1.0 yet — that will mean a committed, stable
public API contract.
Self-hosting? Pin a release instead of tracking master. master is continuously
deployed to our hosted app and moves several times a day.
git checkout v0.1.0 # source
docker pull ghcr.io/datanika-io/datanika-core:v0.1.0 # image (:latest follows master)
Every version's notes are on the Releases page.
Security advisories cite the first patched release (e.g. Patched: v0.1.0), so a pinned
tag tells you immediately whether you're affected.
The
datanika-mcpsub-package is versioned and released independently (mcp-v*tags, published to PyPI).
Why Datanika?
| Datanika | Airbyte | Fivetran | dbt Cloud | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Extract + Load | ✅ 36 connectors | ✅ 400+ | ✅ 500+ | ❌ |
| Transformations | ✅ dbt built-in | ❌ | ❌ (add-on) | ✅ |
| Scheduling | ✅ Cron + DAG | ✅ Basic | ✅ Basic | ✅ |
| Pipeline DAG | ✅ Visual | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Self-host | ✅ Docker | ⚠️ Needs K8s | ❌ SaaS only | ❌ SaaS only |
| Open source | ✅ AGPL-3.0 | ⚠️ ELv2 | ❌ | ❌ |
| Notifications | ✅ Slack/Telegram/Email/Webhook | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Pricing | Free forever | Free tier limited | ~$250+/mo | ~$100+/mo |
Tech Stack
| Component | Technology |
|---|---|
| Frontend | Reflex (Python → React) |
| Backend | Starlette (via Reflex) |
| Extract + Load | dlt |
| Transform | dbt-core |
| Database | PostgreSQL 16 |
| Task Queue | Celery + Redis |
| Scheduling | APScheduler |
Roadmap
- 36 connectors (databases, SaaS APIs, files, streaming)
- dbt transformations, tests, snapshots, packages
- REST API v1 with OpenAPI/Swagger and typed per-connector inline schemas
- AI-agent compatibility (
/llms.txt, agent-guide, 5-tier API, golden-path loop,?wait=true,Idempotency-Key, run cancel, MCP server) - Pipeline templates (one-click setup)
- In-app notification center with Slack, Telegram, Email, Webhook channels
- SSO (SAML/OIDC) for Enterprise
- Usage-based billing (cloud plugin)
- 2,300+ tests across unit, security, and E2E (SQLite in-memory for speed)
- Kubernetes Helm chart — in-tree at
deploy/helm/datanika/; installs the same image as the Compose path. Bundled Postgres/Redis are single-replica and not production-grade — point it at managed databases (see the chart README) - Data lineage visualization
AI Agent Integration
Datanika speaks MCP, so AI agents (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, …) can browse connections, preview data, compile transformations, and monitor runs natively. 25 tools — 17 read-only, 8 write. There are two ways in.
Hosted — nothing to install. Paste this wherever your client accepts a remote MCP server and authorize in the browser:
https://app.datanika.io/mcp
OAuth 2.1, no API key to handle. Read-only unless you grant write at consent — a client that asks for nothing gets read-only, and a pasted API key stays read-only here even if its own scopes allow writes.
Local — stdio. Published on PyPI as datanika-mcp and listed on the official MCP registry as io.datanika/datanika-mcp:
# read-only by default; add --allow-write to enable the 8 write tools
uvx datanika-mcp --url https://app.datanika.io --api-key YOUR_KEY
See datanika-mcp/README.md for per-client config snippets and the full tool list, or datanika.io/docs/mcp-server for the hosted walkthrough.
Additional agent resources:
/llms.txt— discovery document/api/v1/openapi.json— OpenAPI spec with typed inline schemas/api/v1/meta/agent-tiers— 5-tier capability stack (JSON)docs/api_versioning.md— stability tiers and deprecation policy
Open-Core Strategy
Core platform is open-source (AGPL-3.0).
Cloud version adds billing, quotas, and usage metering via the datanika-cloud plugin.
Links
- 🌐 Website: datanika.io
- 🚀 Cloud Platform: app.datanika.io
- 📖 Documentation: datanika.io/docs
- 🔌 Connectors: datanika.io/connectors
- 📡 API Reference: datanika.io/docs/api
Security
Found a vulnerability? See SECURITY.md for our disclosure policy, supported versions, and reporting instructions.
Contributing
We welcome contributors and design partners. Open an issue or contact info@datanika.io.