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Nimble MCP Server is available on the Databricks Marketplace as a one-click install. It creates a secure Unity Catalog connection that gives any Databricks agent access to Nimble’s full web data platform — search, extract, map, crawl, and structured data extraction. This is the install foundation every other Databricks surface builds on.
Nimble MCP: Agentic Web Search Platform listing on the Databricks Marketplace

Prerequisites

Install from Databricks Marketplace

1

Find Nimble MCP Server

In your Databricks workspace, go to Marketplace and search for Nimble.
2

Install and configure the connection

Click Install. In the installation dialog, configure:
FieldValue
Connection nameA name for the Unity Catalog connection (default: nimble-mcp-marketplace)
HostPre-populated
Base pathPre-populated
Bearer tokenYour Nimble API key
Install dialog for Nimble MCP Server showing connection name, host, base path, and bearer token fields
3

Verify the installation

Go to Agents > MCP Servers tab and confirm nimble-mcp-marketplace appears with status Active.

Share the connection

Grant access so team members can use the Nimble MCP server:
  1. Go to Catalog > Connections and click the Nimble connection.
  2. Open the Permissions tab and grant USE CONNECTION to the principals that need access.

Governance with Unity AI Gateway

Once installed, the Nimble connection appears automatically in Unity AI Gateway > MCPs as an active MCP server — no extra registration step. Unity AI Gateway is the control plane for AI traffic in Databricks, so every Nimble call routes through its managed proxy and inherits Databricks-native governance.

Available now

  • Managed proxy and AI Playground — Nimble is reachable at https://<workspace-hostname>/api/2.0/mcp/external/<connection-name> and available in the Playground.
  • Audit and usage tracking — every proxied Nimble call is recorded in the system.access.audit system table with the calling user, connection, HTTP method, and status code. The built-in AI Gateway Usage Analytics dashboard visualizes this under the External MCP Server tab.
Query your own Nimble usage directly:
SELECT event_time,
       user_identity.email            AS user,
       request_params.connection_name AS connection_name,
       request_params.http_method     AS http_method,
       response.status_code           AS status_code
FROM system.access.audit
WHERE service_name = 'ucHttpConnection'
  AND action_name  = 'ucHttpConnectionProxiedRequest'
  AND request_params.connection_name ILIKE '%nimble%'
ORDER BY event_time DESC;

Databricks MCP governance Beta

Ask your Databricks account team to enable these on your workspace:
  • Payload logging — full request and response bodies recorded to a Unity Catalog inference table for audit and replay (the audit table above logs metadata only, not bodies).
  • Service policies — constrain a Nimble tool with a SQL Unity Catalog function (for example, a domain allowlist on nimble_search); the gateway enforces the policy before the call leaves Databricks.
  • Rate limits and cost attribution — meter and attribute Nimble usage per user and workload.
The Marketplace connection authenticates to Nimble with a shared bearer token, so all traffic shares one Nimble identity. Per-user authentication — where each Databricks user authenticates to Nimble individually (on-behalf-of) so the end-user identity reaches Nimble’s logs — is on the roadmap.

Test in Databricks

AI Playground

1

Open AI Playground

Choose a model with the Tools enabled label.
2

Add Nimble MCP tools

Click Tools > + Add tool > MCP Servers > External MCP servers and select the nimble-mcp-marketplace connection.
3

Chat

Ask the model to search the web, extract a page, or map a site to verify the tools work.

Databricks Assistant

  1. Open Databricks Assistant and click the Settings icon.
  2. Under MCP Servers, click + Add MCP Server > External MCP servers and select the nimble-mcp-marketplace connection.
Once the connection is verified here, point a production agent at the same proxy URL. The Nimble MCP + Databricks notebook walks through connecting a Databricks-hosted LLM to Nimble tools with LangGraph and the DatabricksMCPClient.

Resources

Databricks Marketplace Listing

Install Nimble MCP Server directly from the Marketplace

Nimble MCP Server Docs

Full MCP Server setup for Claude, Cursor, and other clients

Databricks External MCP Docs

Databricks documentation for external MCP server connections
https://mintcdn.com/nimble-f5a8283f/11o25xfLHwYX_BgD/images/icons/data-enrichment.svg?fit=max&auto=format&n=11o25xfLHwYX_BgD&q=85&s=90ace12188af8758c7f439576d0d6a66

Data Enrichment

Call Nimble as SQL table functions to enrich Delta tables at scale