DEV Community: Matthew McFadden

Empower your agents with the new SurrealDB MCP

Matthew McFadden — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 14:12:49 +0000

Exactly a year ago we released SurrealMCP, a server you had to install and run in order to connect agents to your SurrealDB instance. Today, we're excited to announce the next evolution in agent intelligence with the new hosted SurrealDB MCP server.

With this new SurrealDB MCP server, all you need is to add one URL to your AI tool of choice, sign in with your SurrealDB account, and your assistant can work on your instances or contexts alongside you. Whether you want to deploy a new instance, spin up a new Spectron context, execute queries against your graph, or ask questions about your data, the new SurrealDB MCP server has you covered.

Let's dive into it! 🎉

Getting started

Adding the SurrealDB MCP to your agent

Previously, you would need to add an MCP configuration for every instance or context that you wanted to connect to, and there was no way to provision instances or contexts with an agent. With the new hosted SurrealDB MCP server, you can do all of this and much more by adding a single URL:

https://mcp.surrealdb.com

You can authorise the SurrealDB MCP Server either through signing in to your SurrealDB account, or for fine grained control, create a personal access token from the account portal. That is the whole setup. Once connected, your agent now has the ability to interact with your SurrealDB Cloud resources.

Looking to setup your agent? We have step-by-step guides for setting up with Claude and Cursor. For other configurations, please see our MCP docs.

Deploy and manage resources just by asking

Everything you would normally click through in the SurrealDB Studio dashboard is available in your conversations. Deploy a new instance or context, expand your resources as you grow, or upgrade to the latest version of SurrealDB. When deploying resources, the MCP server can put together a configuration, give you a cost estimation, and wait for your confirmation to kick off.

The same conversation can also cover the rest of the housekeeping such as inviting users to your organisation, managing their access level, checking your monthly spend, and updating your instances.

Ask questions about your data and build with ease

Note
Instance querying is only available on instances running SurrealDB 3.2.3 and above

The usual way to get an AI assistant to look at your database is to copy a schema or a query into a chat window, then paste the results back out again. SurrealDB MCP removes this loop. Simply ask a question in plain language and your assistant finds the right database, writes the query, runs it, and shows you both the query it wrote and what came back.

You don't have to describe the shape of your data first, because it can go and look. Ask how many orders you took last week grouped by status, and it will find the table, work out the fields, and write the aggregate itself. Ask what the customer table actually says, and it will describe the fields and indexes back to you. As a bonus, it's often faster than opening SurrealDB Studio to check for yourself.

It works the other way round too. While you're building something new, you can ask it to create a single table or an entire schema for an enterprise-level app.

Memory that outlasts the conversation

Every new chat normally starts from nothing. A decision your team made three weeks ago is gone unless someone remembers to paste it back in. My favorite feature of SurrealDB MCP is that you can interact directly with Spectron, our memory layer for AI agents, in order to keep a persistent brain related to your chats which can be shared with multiple users.

Simply ask your agent to save a memory or give it documents to read, and it will search through them by meaning rather than by keyword and store it for you. Then, ask your agent to retrieve something later:

Let us know what you think

We'd love to hear your thoughts! Join us on Discord to ask questions, share what you're building, or tell us what you'd like your assistant to be able to do next.

To learn even more about SurrealDB MCP, please check out our MCP docs.

What's new in Surrealist 3.9

Matthew McFadden — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 17:10:31 +0000

We're excited to announce the release of Surrealist 3.9! This version introduces a complete design overhaul, a new datasets browser and data manager, an improved record inspector, and much more. Let's dive into what's new 🎉

Highlights

Complete design overhaul

Surrealist 3.9 introduces the most significant visual refresh since Surrealist 2.0. From the new sidebar and topbar to the fully revamped light theme, the entire interface has been redesigned to feel fresher, cleaner, more consistent, and easier to navigate.

Namespace and database selection has been unified into a single selection menu, making it faster to switch context without the need to navigate separate menus. Additionally, the new search input makes it easy to find what you need, even in large deployments.

Connection and instance settings have also been completely redesigned, and the overview page now includes search for both connections and organisations. These changes make it easier to find what you are looking for no matter how many instances you manage.

New datasets browser and data manager

Working with imports and exports of your database and trying out new features with official SurrealDB demo datasets has never been easier! Surrealist 3.9 introduces a data manager and dedicated datasets browser to make managing bulk data in your database faster and more intuitive.

Additionally, it is now easier than ever to discover, browse, and apply official SurrealDB datasets to your database or Sandbox instance so that you can learn about and try new SurrealDB features in an interactive manner without needing to scroll through docs.

Improved record inspector

The record inspector has been significantly enhanced to give you a deeper view of your data. The new References and Live tabs make it easier to explore record relationships and monitor real-time changes, while the new actions menu gives you more control over how you interact with individual records.

These improvements make the record inspector a more capable tool for day-to-day data exploration whether you are tracing graph relationships, inspecting linked records, or watching live query results update in real time.

Full changelog

Improved designer view to use ALTER statements in 3.x instances
Overhauled Surrealist design
- Improved brand icons
- Redesigned light theme
- Redesigned sidebar and topbar
- Added a toggle sidebar button to the topbar
- Moved settings button to a menu item in the topbar when logged out and account menu when logged in
- Unified the namespace and database selectors into a single selection menu
- Completely redesigned connection and instance settings
- Implemented new search functionality for connections and organisations on the overview page
- Revamped and re-enabled API Docs view
Implemented a new datasets browser and data manager (#1224)
Improved the record inspector with new references and live tabs, and new actions
Implemented VIM mode setting (#106)
Implemented the ability to toggle tables in the designer (#372)
Implemented default namespace and database functionality for 3.x instances
Implemented namespace and database comment editor
Added namespace and database comments to selection menu and database settings page
Added search inputs to the namespace and database selection lists
Added designer view LOD settings for zoom-based table simplification (#1222)
Added pagination to the newsletter drawer
Fixed title bar overlapping drawers on Windows and Linux
Fixed authentication redirect on session expiry
Fixed Windows install art not showing for new installations
Fixed Surrealist mini not allowing datasets other than surreal-deal-store
Fixed an error where imports always showed success, even when they failed
Fixed 2.x sample data datasets being applied to 3.x databases
Fixed explorer returning no rows when sorting on empty columns (#1194)
Fixed interface and designer zoom not applying on all platforms (#1188)
Clean up stale graph connections after deleting edge tables (#1147)
Fixed an issue where clicking a table in designer view would cause a crash (#1238)
Fixed an issue causing large conection urls to cause UI overflow in connection cards (#1225)
Fixed broken documentation links (#1217)
Fixed passing URLs through desktop launcher (#1179)
Fixed Designer exports including lower LOD levels
Fixed designer not showing links for complex ids (#1063)
Fixed UUID records not resolving correctly in graph (#974)
Fixed clipboard writes failing in some browsers (#994)
Fixed GraphQL view authentication (#1101)

We hope you enjoy these new features and improvements! As always, we appreciate your feedback and suggestions for future releases. Join the SurrealDB Discord to engage with the community and receive support.

Get started for free today at app.surrealdb.com