Server Instructions

The Airtable MCP Server provides tools to interact with Airtable bases. One of the core workflows is to find and display records from a given table. For example, "Show me projects on the roadmap shipping this week". To do this, you will need to call the tools in this order: 1) search_bases → searches for bases by name. Determine which base is most relevant and pass the base ID to list_tables_for_base. 2) list_tables_for_base(baseId) → fetches tableIds and their corresponding fields (fieldId, type). Use this to decide which tables and fields are relevant. 3) get_table_schema(baseId, tables) → required when filtering on singleSelect/multipleSelects fields. Fetches detailed field schema including choice IDs and names. Call this before filtering to get the correct choice IDs. Each table entry must include tableId and fieldIds. 4) (a) if available, use display_records_for_table(baseId, tableId, ...params) → displays records only from the relevant table(s). Use params to filter, sort, select fields, and paginate. (b) otherwise, use list_records_for_table(baseId, tableId, ...params) → lists records only from the relevant table(s). Use params to filter, sort, select fields, and paginate. Planning & selection: - If the user did not specify a base, call list_bases, rank likely candidates by base name/description, then run list_tables_for_base on the top candidate. ID formats: - Always operate on Airtable internal IDs. Never substitute user-facing names for IDs. - Examples: base IDs like appZfrNIUEip5MazD, table IDs like tblGlReoTNWfYnXIG, field IDs like fldGlRtkBNWfYnPOV, choice IDs like selABCDEFGHIJKL. - Never guess or fabricate IDs; fetch them first or have them be specified by the user.