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MCP activity gives AI admins visibility into how the Lightdash MCP server is being used across the organization. Every tool call is recorded with who ran it, which agent (if any) it belonged to, the arguments it received, whether it succeeded, and which MCP client made the call. Use it to:
  • Spot MCP clients or agents that are erroring repeatedly.
  • See which tools are actually in use and which aren’t.
  • Investigate a specific tool call — inspect the exact arguments and error message.
  • Answer questions like “who is calling our MCP server, and from where?”.

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Where to find it

Open Organization Settings → Ask AI → MCP. The tab is visible to users with an AI admin role:
  • Org-level AI admins see every MCP tool call in the organization, including calls made outside any project.
  • Project-scoped AI admins see only tool calls made against their projects. Calls made without a project (for example, admin tools) are visible to org-level admins only.
Activity is retained for 90 days. Older records are cleaned up automatically.

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Overview panel

The overview panel at the top of the page summarizes MCP usage across whatever the page is filtered to:
  • Total calls, success rate, and error count as headline tiles.
  • Top tools — the six most-called tools with proportional usage bars.
  • Active agents — per-agent call counts, plus a bucket for tool calls made without an agent (for example, direct MCP client sessions).
  • Recent errors — the five most recent failing tool calls. Click one to open the same detail drawer as a row in the activity feed.
The overview shares the page’s project and agent filters, so the numbers always describe exactly what the table is scoped to. The status filter (success / error) intentionally does not affect the overview — the success/error split stays meaningful even when you’ve filtered the table down to errors only.

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Activity feed

Below the overview is a paginated feed of every recorded MCP tool call. The feed loads more rows as you scroll and each row shows the tool name, status, user, agent, project, MCP client, timestamp, and duration.

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Session grouping

When sorted by time, tool calls are grouped into sessions — one client connection to the MCP server. Each group has a header row showing the short session id, the MCP client name and version, the number of calls and errors in the session, and the time of the latest call. Click the header to collapse or expand the group. A session is split into segments whenever there’s a 1-hour gap with no activity, so a client that reconnects the next day appears as a new group at the top of the feed instead of hoisting old calls out of place. Calls without a session id are collected under a No session ID header. This happens when the MCP client doesn’t participate in session tracking (see How sessions are tracked below). A single sessionless call renders as a plain row. Sorting the feed by duration falls back to a flat, ungrouped view.

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How sessions are tracked

Session ids are minted server-side using the Streamable HTTP transport’s standard Mcp-Session-Id mechanism:
  • On initialize, the Lightdash MCP server returns an Mcp-Session-Id response header.
  • Spec-compliant clients echo that header on every subsequent request, and Lightdash records the id on each resulting tool call.
  • Clients that don’t echo the header still work — their tool calls are recorded but appear under No session ID instead of grouped.
You don’t need to configure anything; any MCP client that follows the Streamable HTTP spec gets session grouping for free.

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Filtering and sorting

Filters live above the table and are persisted in the URL, so you can share a filtered view by copying the link. You can filter by:
  • Project
  • Agent
  • Tool
  • MCP client
  • Status — success or error
  • Date range
Sort the feed by time or duration, ascending or descending.

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Per-call detail drawer

Click any row to open a drawer with the full details of that tool call:
  • Tool arguments — the full JSON payload the MCP client sent.
  • Error message — the exception or protocol error returned to the client, if the call failed.
  • Duration — how long the tool took to execute.
  • Client identity — the MCP client’s name and version as reported in the MCP handshake, the raw user agent, the auth method used, and the MCP protocol version.
  • Session — the full session id this call belongs to, when the client participated in session tracking.
The drawer is the same view opened from the Recent errors list in the overview panel.

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Admin API

Both endpoints back the settings page and are available on the Lightdash API for scripting and integrations. They require an AI admin role and follow the same visibility rules as the UI: org-level admins see all activity, project-scoped admins see only their projects.

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List MCP activity

Returns a paginated feed of MCP tool calls. Query parameters: Example:
Each tool call in the response includes the caller, the tool name and arguments, status, error message (if any), duration, MCP client identity (client name, client version, user agent, auth method, protocol version), and — when the client participated in session tracking — a sessionId and a sessionGroup describing the session segment the call belongs to (segment key, total calls, and errors). When sorted by createdAt, results are ordered by session segment so calls from the same session stay contiguous; sorting by durationMs returns flat chronological order.

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MCP activity stats

Returns the aggregated overview: total call count, error count, the top 6 tools by call count, per-agent call counts (with a bucket for calls made without an agent), and the 5 most recent errors as full activity items. Query parameters are the same as the list endpoint, except status — the response already breaks results down by status and recentErrors is always error-only, so status is deliberately not accepted. Example: