MCP Toolbox for Databases - AI Developer Tools Tool

Overview

MCP Toolbox for Databases (formerly “Gen AI Toolbox for Databases”) is an open-source MCP server that simplifies building generative-AI tools which need database access. It provides a centralized control plane that sits between agents (or applications) and your databases, enabling developers to define tools, toolsets, and prompts in a declarative tools.yaml file and serve them to LLM-driven agents without redeploying application code. According to the project README, Toolbox handles common operational complexities — connection pooling, authentication, and observability — so generated queries and database operations execute more reliably and securely. ([github.com](https://github.com/googleapis/genai-toolbox)) Toolbox ships with prebuilt integrations and example tools for a wide range of data sources (Postgres, MySQL, Cloud SQL, BigQuery, Spanner, Firestore, SQL Server, and more) and provides SDKs for Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, and Go. It also supports runtime features useful for productionizing agent-driven database access, such as dynamic tool reloading, OpenTelemetry tracing/metrics, and compatibility with Gemini Data Analytics for NL2SQL conversion (added in recent releases). These capabilities let teams expose SQL or management tasks to LLMs while preserving observability and access controls. ([github.com](https://github.com/googleapis/genai-toolbox))

GitHub Statistics

• Stars: 12,321
• Forks: 1,118
• Contributors: 86
• License: Apache-2.0
• Primary Language: Go
• Last Updated: 2026-01-08T22:56:45Z
• Latest Release: v0.25.0

The repository shows active development and a steady release cadence — the project is versioned and has published releases (v0.24.0 in December 2025) with feature additions like Gemini Data Analytics integration and Oracle OCI support. According to the GitHub repository, the project is beta but widely used, with a large open-source footprint (thousands of stars and hundreds of forks), open contribution guidelines, and an Apache‑2.0 license. Release notes and the README document ongoing feature work and platform support. ([github.com](https://github.com/googleapis/genai-toolbox/releases))

Installation

Install via npm:

npx @toolbox-sdk/server --tools-file tools.yaml

docker run -p 5000:5000 -v $(pwd)/tools.yaml:/app/tools.yaml us-central1-docker.pkg.dev/database-toolbox/toolbox/toolbox:$VERSION --tools-file "/app/tools.yaml"

./toolbox --tools-file "tools.yaml"   # run a downloaded binary

pip install toolbox-core        # Python core SDK (load tools from Toolbox server)

npm install @toolbox-sdk/core   # JavaScript/TypeScript SDK

go get github.com/googleapis/mcp-toolbox-sdk-go  # Go SDK

Key Features

• Declarative tools.yaml to define sources, tools, toolsets, and prompts.
• Connection pooling and best-practice DB access for reliable query execution.
• Integrated authentication (including IAM for Cloud SQL) and access controls.
• OpenTelemetry metrics and tracing for end-to-end observability.
• Prebuilt DB integrations: Postgres, MySQL, Cloud SQL, BigQuery, Spanner, Firestore.
• Gemini Data Analytics NL2SQL integration to convert natural language to SQL.
• Dynamic tool reloading to update tools without redeploying applications.

Community

The project has a large, active community on GitHub (thousands of stars and hundreds of forks) and an explicit CONTRIBUTING guide and Code of Conduct. According to the repository page and release history, there are active issues and pull requests and a documented release cadence; documentation and a Discord channel are linked from the repo. The project is Apache‑2.0 licensed and accepts external contributions. ([github.com](https://github.com/googleapis/genai-toolbox))

Key Information

• Category: Developer Tools
• Type: AI Developer Tools Tool