What is Genai Toolbox

genai-toolbox is an open source MCP server for databases, designed for enterprise-grade and production-quality usage. It simplifies the development of tools by managing complexities like connection pooling and authentication.

Use cases

Use cases include building AI tools that access database data, integrating tools into agents with minimal code, and deploying tools across multiple frameworks.

How to use

To use genai-toolbox, you need to install the server, run it, and integrate your application with the provided tools. Detailed instructions can be found in the full documentation.

Key features

Key features include simplified development with minimal code, improved performance through best practices, enhanced security with integrated authentication, and end-to-end observability with built-in metrics and tracing support.

Where to use

genai-toolbox can be used in various fields that require database interactions, such as enterprise applications, data analytics, and AI-driven tools.

MCP Toolbox for Databases

[!NOTE]
MCP Toolbox for Databases is currently in beta, and may see breaking
changes until the first stable release (v1.0).

MCP Toolbox for Databases is an open source MCP server for databases. It enables
you to develop tools easier, faster, and more securely by handling the complexities
such as connection pooling, authentication, and more.

This README provides a brief overview. For comprehensive details, see the full
documentation.

[!NOTE]
This solution was originally named “Gen AI Toolbox for Databases” as
its initial development predated MCP, but was renamed to align with recently
added MCP compatibility.

Table of Contents

• Why Toolbox?
• General Architecture
• Getting Started
  • Installing the server
  • Running the server
  • Integrating your application
• Configuration
  • Sources
  • Tools
  • Toolsets
• Versioning
• Contributing

Why Toolbox?

Toolbox helps you build Gen AI tools that let your agents access data in your
database. Toolbox provides:

• Simplified development: Integrate tools to your agent in less than 10
  lines of code, reuse tools between multiple agents or frameworks, and deploy
  new versions of tools more easily.
• Better performance: Best practices such as connection pooling,
  authentication, and more.
• Enhanced security: Integrated auth for more secure access to your data
• End-to-end observability: Out of the box metrics and tracing with built-in
  support for OpenTelemetry.

⚡ Supercharge Your Workflow with an AI Database Assistant ⚡

Stop context-switching and let your AI assistant become a true co-developer. By connecting your IDE to your databases with MCP Toolbox, you can delegate complex and time-consuming database tasks, allowing you to build faster and focus on what matters. This isn’t just about code completion; it’s about giving your AI the context it needs to handle the entire development lifecycle.

Here’s how it will save you time:

• Query in Plain English: Interact with your data using natural language right from your IDE. Ask complex questions like, “How many orders were delivered in 2024, and what items were in them?” without writing any SQL.
• Automate Database Management: Simply describe your data needs, and let the AI assistant manage your database for you. It can handle generating queries, creating tables, adding indexes, and more.
• Generate Context-Aware Code: Empower your AI assistant to generate application code and tests with a deep understanding of your real-time database schema. This accelerates the development cycle by ensuring the generated code is directly usable.
• Slash Development Overhead: Radically reduce the time spent on manual setup and boilerplate. MCP Toolbox helps streamline lengthy database configurations, repetitive code, and error-prone schema migrations.

Learn how to connect your AI tools (IDEs) to Toolbox using MCP.

General Architecture

Toolbox sits between your application’s orchestration framework and your
database, providing a control plane that is used to modify, distribute, or
invoke tools. It simplifies the management of your tools by providing you with a
centralized location to store and update tools, allowing you to share tools
between agents and applications and update those tools without necessarily
redeploying your application.

Getting Started

Installing the server

For the latest version, check the releases page and use the
following instructions for your OS and CPU architecture.

# see releases page for other versions
export VERSION=0.7.0
curl -O https://storage.googleapis.com/genai-toolbox/v$VERSION/linux/amd64/toolbox
chmod +x toolbox

# see releases page for other versions
export VERSION=0.7.0
docker pull us-central1-docker.pkg.dev/database-toolbox/toolbox/toolbox:$VERSION

go install github.com/googleapis/[email protected]

Running the server

Configure a tools.yaml to define your tools, and then
execute toolbox to start the server:

./toolbox --tools-file "tools.yaml"

You can use toolbox help for a full list of flags! To stop the server, send a
terminate signal (ctrl+c on most platforms).

For more detailed documentation on deploying to different environments, check
out the resources in the How-to
section

Integrating your application

Once your server is up and running, you can load the tools into your
application. See below the list of Client SDKs for using various frameworks:

Configuration

The primary way to configure Toolbox is through the tools.yaml file. If you
have multiple files, you can tell toolbox which to load with the --tools-file tools.yaml flag.

You can find more detailed reference documentation to all resource types in the
Resources.

Sources

The sources section of your tools.yaml defines what data sources your
Toolbox should have access to. Most tools will have at least one source to
execute against.

sources:
  my-pg-source:
    kind: postgres
    host: 127.0.0.1
    port: 5432
    database: toolbox_db
    user: toolbox_user
    password: my-password

For more details on configuring different types of sources, see the
Sources.

Tools

The tools section of a tools.yaml define the actions an agent can take: what
kind of tool it is, which source(s) it affects, what parameters it uses, etc.

tools:
  search-hotels-by-name:
    kind: postgres-sql
    source: my-pg-source
    description: Search for hotels based on name.
    parameters:
      - name: name
        type: string
        description: The name of the hotel.
    statement: SELECT * FROM hotels WHERE name ILIKE '%' || $1 || '%';

For more details on configuring different types of tools, see the
Tools.

Toolsets

The toolsets section of your tools.yaml allows you to define groups of tools
that you want to be able to load together. This can be useful for defining
different groups based on agent or application.

toolsets:
    my_first_toolset:
        - my_first_tool
        - my_second_tool
    my_second_toolset:
        - my_second_tool
        - my_third_tool

You can load toolsets by name:

# This will load all tools
all_tools = client.load_toolset()

# This will only load the tools listed in 'my_second_toolset'
my_second_toolset = client.load_toolset("my_second_toolset")

Versioning

This project uses semantic versioning, including a
MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH version number that increments with:

• MAJOR version when we make incompatible API changes
• MINOR version when we add functionality in a backward compatible manner
• PATCH version when we make backward compatible bug fixes

The public API that this applies to is the CLI associated with Toolbox, the
interactions with official SDKs, and the definitions in the tools.yaml file.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please, see the CONTRIBUTING
to get started.

Please note that this project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct.
By participating in this project you agree to abide by its terms. See
Contributor Code of Conduct for more information.