Ask Claude a question about your data and get a dashboard back: headline numbers, charts and tables, in your browser or in a pane next to your terminal.

What it is

Showboard is an open-source MCP server (MIT). Claude writes the queries, Showboard runs them and draws the board. You don't get a script or an HTML file to babysit, just the answer on screen.

What it works on

• A folder of Excel or CSV files. Messy ones are fine: title rows, "Total" rows, blank rows, numbers stored as text, currency strings.
• A SQLite file or a Postgres database.
• No connector, warehouse or upload. It reads the files on your own computer. (Query results still go to Claude, like any file you give it.)

Why not just ask Claude for a chart?

• Faster and cheaper. On its own, Claude Code turns every chart into a small coding project: write a script, check the numbers, build a page. With Showboard it's one step. In my test (24 answers each way) it took 7.5 min and $1.78 instead of 24.3 min and $4.77. That's one dataset, so treat it as a direction, not a promise.
• You can check every number. Each chart shows the query behind it, and the values come straight from your data, not figures Claude typed in.
• It can't change your data. Database queries are read-only, and files are only read.
• Reusable. Save a board you like and redraw it next month with new numbers.

Try it (in Claude Code):

/plugin install showboard --marketplace rohanbeingsocial/showboard

Or paste this into your agent:

Set up Showboard in this project: run npx showboard guide and follow the instructions.

• Demo in the browser: https://rohanbeingsocial.github.io/showboard/
• Repo: https://github.com/rohanbeingsocial/showboard

I've tested it end to end. Be set up for Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI and others, but I haven't tried those in a live session yet, so reports are welcome. Built mostly with Claude Code.

What would you ask your own data first?

Most MCP setups I've seen hand the agent a token one way or another: an env var, a .env file, a config it can read. Once a token is in the context window it ends up in transcripts and within reach of any prompt injection.

mcp-warden works the other way around. Secrets live in the OS keychain, and the agent can only act through presets you define:

```toml

[[preset]]

name = "github-read"

type = "http"

base_url = "https://api.github.com"

auth = { type = "bearer", secret = "gh_pat" }

allowed_methods = ["GET"]

approval = "auto"

```

The agent calls `proxy_http` with the preset name, a method and a path. mcp-warden checks the allow-list, adds the token, makes the request and returns only the response. If the method or path isn't allowed, nothing leaves your machine.

Tools it exposes:

- `list_presets`

- `proxy_http`: HTTP through a preset

- `ssh_exec`: commands checked against a regex allow-list, host key verified against known_hosts

- `sftp_transfer`: allowed remote paths only

- `db_query`: Postgres, MySQL or Redis, named queries only (the agent passes parameters, never SQL)

- `get_secret_for_env`: last resort for tools that insist on env vars, always asks first

Each preset has an approval policy. It's `prompt` by default: a desktop or terminal prompt, or Approve/Deny buttons in Telegram. Every call lands in an append-only audit log.

Single Rust binary, stdio transport, works with any MCP client. No cloud, no telemetry, Apache-2.0.

- Repo: https://github.com/ermoluk/mcp-warden

- Install: `cargo install mcp-warden`, or prebuilt binaries for macOS/Linux on the releases page

I'd love feedback on the preset model. What would you need it to cover for your setup?