MCP server

The syntaqlite binary ships a stdio-based MCP server. Any MCP-compatible agent can spawn it and call its tools to format, analyze, and parse SQL. This guide wires it up.

Prerequisite: syntaqlite on your $PATH. See the CLI tutorial for install options.

Add the server to your client's config

Every MCP client points at the same command. Drop this block into your client's MCP config file:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "syntaqlite": {
      "command": "syntaqlite",
      "args": ["mcp"]
    }
  }
}

If the config file already has an mcpServers object, merge the syntaqlite entry into it.

Config file location

ClientPath
Claude Desktop (macOS)~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
Claude Desktop (Linux)~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
Claude Desktop (Windows)%APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
Cursor.cursor/mcp.json in your project
Windsurf~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json

Other MCP-compatible clients follow the same schema; consult their docs for the config path.

Restart and verify

Restart the client so it picks up the new server. Then ask it to format some SQL, for example:

Format this SQL: select id,name from users where active=1

The client should invoke syntaqlite's format_sql tool and return:

SELECT id, name FROM users WHERE active = 1;

If nothing happens, check the client's MCP/server log for spawn errors; the usual cause is syntaqlite not being on the $PATH seen by the GUI app (GUI apps often don't inherit your shell's environment — specify an absolute path to syntaqlite in the command field if needed).

Next steps