
Prerequisites
- A Databricks workspace with the Managed MCP Servers preview enabled (manage previews)
CREATE CONNECTIONprivilege on the Unity Catalog metastore- A Nimble API key — sign up and generate one from Account Settings > API Keys
Install from Databricks Marketplace
Install and configure the connection
Click Install. In the installation dialog, configure:

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Connection name | A name for the Unity Catalog connection (default: nimble-mcp-marketplace) |
| Host | Pre-populated |
| Base path | Pre-populated |
| Bearer token | Your Nimble API key |

Share the connection
Grant access so team members can use the Nimble MCP server:- Go to Catalog > Connections and click the Nimble connection.
- 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.auditsystem 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.
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.
Test in Databricks
AI Playground
Add Nimble MCP tools
Click Tools > + Add tool > MCP Servers > External MCP servers and select the
nimble-mcp-marketplace connection.Databricks Assistant
- Open Databricks Assistant and click the Settings icon.
- Under MCP Servers, click + Add MCP Server > External MCP servers and select the
nimble-mcp-marketplaceconnection.
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
Data Enrichment
Call Nimble as SQL table functions to enrich Delta tables at scale