Tiger MCP

Tiger CLI

Tiger CLI is the command-line interface for Tiger Cloud. It provides commands for managing and querying database services, as well as an integrated Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for use with AI assistants.

Installation

Multiple installation methods are provided. Choose your preferred method from the options below. If you aren't sure, use the first one!

Install Script (macOS/Linux/WSL)

curl -fsSL https://cli.tigerdata.com | sh

Install Script (Windows)

irm https://cli.tigerdata.com/install.ps1 | iex

Homebrew (macOS/Linux)

brew install --cask timescale/tap/tiger-cli

Debian/Ubuntu

# Add repository
curl -s https://packagecloud.io/install/repositories/timescale/tiger-cli/script.deb.sh | sudo os=any dist=any bash

# Install tiger-cli
sudo apt-get install tiger-cli

For manual repository installation instructions, see here.

Red Hat/Fedora

# Add repository
curl -s https://packagecloud.io/install/repositories/timescale/tiger-cli/script.rpm.sh | sudo os=rpm_any dist=rpm_any bash

# Install tiger-cli
sudo yum install tiger-cli

For manual repository installation instructions, see here.

Go Install

go install github.com/timescale/tiger-cli/cmd/tiger@latest

Updating

To upgrade an existing installation to the latest release:

tiger upgrade

This downloads the latest published binary, verifies its checksum, and replaces the currently running binary in place. If Tiger CLI was installed via a package manager (Homebrew, apt, yum/dnf), tiger upgrade will instead point you at the matching package-manager command.

Quick Start

After installing Tiger CLI, authenticate with your Tiger Cloud account:

# Login to your Tiger account
tiger auth login

# View available commands
tiger --help

# List your database services
tiger service list

# Create a new database service
tiger service create --name my-database

# Get connection string
tiger db uri

# Connect to your database
tiger db psql

# Run a query without psql
tiger db query -c "SELECT now()"

# Install the MCP server
tiger mcp install

# Install agent skills for your coding agent
tiger skills install

Usage

Tiger CLI provides the following commands:

• tiger auth - Authentication management
  • login - Log in to your Tiger account (use --headless to authorize with a short code in a browser on any machine)
  • logout - Log out from your Tiger account
  • status - Show current authentication status and project ID (alias: whoami)
• tiger project - Project management
  • list - List all projects you have access to, marking the active one (alias: ls)
  • use - Switch the active project (requires an OAuth login; clears the default service_id, since it belonged to the previous project) (alias: switch)
• tiger service - Service lifecycle management (aliases: services, svc)
  • list - List all services (alias: ls)
  • create - Create a new service
  • get - Show detailed service information (aliases: describe, show)
  • fork - Fork an existing service
  • start - Start a stopped service (alias: resume)
  • stop - Stop a running service (alias: pause)
  • rename - Rename a service
  • resize - Resize service CPU and memory allocation
  • delete - Delete a service (alias: rm)
  • update-password - Update service master password
  • logs - View service logs (alias: log)
  • metrics available - List the metric names available for a service
  • metrics details - Show a metric's description, type, default aggregation and labels
  • metrics series - Fetch a metric's time series, with label filters, an aggregation function, group by and bucket size
• tiger db - Database operations
  • psql - Connect to a database with psql (in an interactive terminal, if the service has read replicas, offers to connect to one of them; use --no-replica-prompt to skip) (alias: connect)
  • query - Execute a SQL query against a database and display the results, without needing psql (alias: )

Use tiger <command> --help for detailed information about each command, or browse the generated CLI reference.

Naming a Service

Anywhere a command takes a service as an argument, it takes either its ID (or a read replica set ID) or its name:

tiger db psql my-api-db
tiger service stop my-api-db

Names are matched exactly. A name that matches more than one service is refused; run tiger service list to find the ID you want. A default service (tiger config set service_id, --service-id, or TIGER_SERVICE_ID) must be an ID, and destructive commands still ask you to type the ID to confirm. The MCP tools take IDs only.

MCP Server

Tiger CLI includes a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that enables AI assistants like Claude Code to interact with your Tiger Cloud infrastructure. The MCP server provides programmatic access to database services and operations.

Installation

Configure the MCP server for your AI assistant:

# Interactive installation (prompts for client selection)
tiger mcp install

# Or specify your client directly
tiger mcp install claude-code      # Claude Code
tiger mcp install codex            # Codex
tiger mcp install copilot          # GitHub Copilot CLI
tiger mcp install cursor           # Cursor IDE
tiger mcp install devin            # Devin
tiger mcp install gemini           # Gemini CLI
tiger mcp install vscode           # VS Code

After installation, restart your AI assistant to activate the Tiger MCP server.

Manual Installation

If your MCP client is not supported by tiger mcp install, follow the client's instructions for installing MCP servers. Use tiger mcp start as the command to start the MCP server. For example, many clients use a JSON file like the following:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tiger": {
      "command": "tiger",
      "args": [
        "mcp",
        "start"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Streamable HTTP Protocol

The above instructions install the MCP server using the stdio transport. If you need to use the Streamable HTTP transport instead, you can start the server with tiger mcp start http --port 8080 and install it into your client using http://localhost:8080 as the URL.

Available MCP Tools

The MCP server exposes the following tools to AI assistants:

Service Management:

• service_list - List all database services in your project
• service_get - Get detailed information about a specific service
• service_create - Create new database services with configurable resources
• service_fork - Fork an existing database service to create an independent copy
• service_start - Start a stopped database service
• service_stop - Stop a running database service
• service_rename - Rename a database service
• service_resize - Resize a database service by changing CPU and memory allocation
• service_delete - Permanently delete a database service (asks you to confirm first if the service is tagged PROD)
• service_update_password - Set a new, randomly generated master password for a service (asks you to confirm first if the service is tagged PROD)
• service_logs - View logs for a database service

Service Metrics:

• service_metrics_available - List the metric names available for a service (hardware usage, PostgreSQL settings and activity, PgBouncer pools, TimescaleDB internals)
• service_metrics_details - Show a metric's description, type, default aggregation and labels
• service_metrics_series - Fetch a metric's time series over a time window, with label filters, an aggregation function, group by and bucket size

Database Operations:

• db_query - Execute SQL queries against a database service, passed inline or as a path to a SQL file, with support for parameterized queries, custom timeouts, and connection pooling
• db_schema - Display a service's database schema (tables, views, materialized views, enums, functions, procedures, indexes, triggers, and TimescaleDB hypertable/continuous aggregate metadata) as readable text for an agent's context
• db_extensions_list - List the PostgreSQL extensions installed in a service database, with each extension's version, schema, and description

Feedback:

• feedback - Submit feedback or a bug report to the Tiger Data team

The MCP server automatically uses your CLI authentication and configuration, so no additional setup is required beyond tiger auth login.

Proxied Tools

In addition to the service management tools listed above, the Tiger MCP server also proxies tools from a remote documentation MCP server. This feature provides AI assistants with semantic search capabilities for PostgreSQL, TimescaleDB, and Tiger Cloud documentation, as well as prompts/guides for various Tiger Cloud features.

The proxied documentation server (pg-aiguide) currently provides the following tools:

• view_skill - Retrieve comprehensive guides for Postgres and TimescaleDB features and best practices
• search_docs - Search PostgreSQL and TimescaleDB documentation using natural language queries

This proxy connection is enabled by default and requires no additional configuration.

To disable the documentation proxy:

tiger config set docs_mcp false

Agent Skills

Tiger CLI can install curated PostgreSQL and TimescaleDB skills directly into your coding agents:

# Interactive installation (prompts for install locations)
tiger skills install

# Or name the locations directly
tiger skills install universal claude-code

Skills are installed for the current user. The universal location, ~/.agents/skills, is read by most coding agents (Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI, VS Code, GitHub Copilot CLI, Devin). Claude Code, Kiro CLI, and Google Antigravity read their own skills directories, so they're separate locations (claude-code, kiro-cli, antigravity). Naming a client that reads ~/.agents/skills, such as cursor, selects universal. Use --skills-dir to install into a directory of your choice instead.

Re-run the command to update the skills to the latest version; skills that are no longer available are removed. With no arguments, the locations you've installed to before are selected in the picker to start with. Existing skills that weren't installed by Tiger CLI are never replaced unless you pass --force.

Configuration

The CLI stores configuration in ~/.config/tiger/config.yaml by default, and supports hierarchical configuration through environment variables and command-line flags.

# List current configuration
tiger config list

# Set configuration values
tiger config set output json

# Remove configuration value
tiger config unset output

# Reset to defaults
tiger config reset

Configuration Options

All configuration options can be set via tiger config set <key> <value>:

• analytics - Enable/disable analytics (default: true)

• color - Enable/disable colored output (default: true)

• docs_mcp - Enable/disable docs MCP proxy (default: true)

• mcp_max_rows - Maximum number of rows the db_query MCP tool returns per result set before truncating, to limit how much data lands in an AI agent's context. Only applies to the MCP tool, not CLI commands. Default: 100

• output - Output format: json, yaml, or table (default: table)

• password_storage - Password storage method: keyring, pgpass, or none (default: keyring)

• read_only - Which services this CLI may change: all, prod, or off (default: off, which protects nothing). An interactive tiger auth login offers a menu of the three modes, and records your choice either way, so it only asks until you answer once. true and on are accepted as aliases for all, and false for off, so existing config files and TIGER_READ_ONLY=true behave as before.

  Changing a protected service is refused, and so is creating one: tiger service create/fork/start/stop/rename/resize/update-password/delete and tiger db create role return an error. Connection strings for it open the session in Tiger Cloud's immutable read-only mode, so the server rejects writes and DDL — that covers tiger db psql, tiger db query, tiger db uri, the db_query MCP tool, and the connection strings embedded in tiger service output and the equivalent MCP tools.

  • all protects every service, and the MCP write tools aren't registered at all, so they don't appear in tools/list and can't be called.
  • prod protects only services tagged PROD, leaving DEV services writable. / and the / MCP tools are gated on the environment they request, so creating a service is allowed and a one is not — otherwise you could create a service this same mode then refuses to delete. Forking a service into a fork is allowed, since that reads production without changing it. The MCP write tools stay registered — they still work on services — and refuse per call instead. These commands read the tag off the service they resolve, so the tag costs no extra API call, and the operation is refused if that lookup fails. The MCP write tools, which take IDs, fetch the service to read its tag. A read replica is judged on its own tag, so a replica of a primary is protected only if that replica set is itself tagged .

Environment Variables

Environment variables override configuration file values. All variables use the TIGER_ prefix:

• TIGER_ANALYTICS - Enable/disable analytics
• TIGER_COLOR - Enable/disable colored output
• TIGER_CONFIG_DIR - Path to configuration directory (default: ~/.config/tiger)
• TIGER_DOCS_MCP - Enable/disable docs MCP proxy
• TIGER_OUTPUT - Output format: json, yaml, or table
• TIGER_PASSWORD_STORAGE - Password storage method: keyring, pgpass, or none
• TIGER_READ_ONLY - Which services this CLI may change: all, prod, or off (same aliases as read_only)
• TIGER_PUBLIC_KEY - Public key to use for authentication (takes priority over stored credentials)
• TIGER_SECRET_KEY - Secret key to use for authentication (takes priority over stored credentials)
• TIGER_SERVICE_ID - Default service ID (a name is refused; see Naming a Service)
• TIGER_VERSION_CHECK - When true, the CLI checks for a newer version on each invocation (in an interactive terminal) and prints a notice if one is available; false to disable

Global Flags

These flags are available on all commands and take precedence over both environment variables and configuration file values:

• --analytics - Enable/disable analytics
• --color - Enable/disable colored output
• --config-dir <path> - Path to configuration directory (default: ~/.config/tiger)
• --password-storage <method> - Password storage method: keyring, pgpass, or none
• --service-id <id> - Service ID (a name is refused; pass one as an argument instead)
• --version-check - Enable/disable checking for updates on startup
• -h, --help - Show help information

Contributing

We welcome contributions! Here's how to get started:

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch
3. Make your changes
4. Add tests for new functionality
5. Ensure all tests pass (go test ./...)
6. Submit a pull request

For detailed development information, see docs/development.md.

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 - see the LICENSE file for details.