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Claude CKAN connectorWhat Claude can do in your CKAN account.
The Claude CKAN connector exposes 20 tools: 20 read, 0 write, 0 undescribed. They explore open data portals built on CKAN, such as dati.gov.it: dataset search, metadata, organizations, groups, tabular queries and quality scores. It installs as a Claude Desktop extension.
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What changes when Claude can browse CKAN portals
Every open data portal built on CKAN expects you to know its structure, its search syntax and its API. This connector, published by ondata, removes that barrier: you ask in plain English, Claude picks the right portal, finds the datasets, reads their metadata and queries the tables that can be queried.
Find the right dataset fast. A journalist wants air quality data for Milan; ckan_find_relevant_datasets ranks the candidates by relevance on dati.gov.it, and ckan_package_show opens the full metadata of the best one.
Answer a question straight from a table. A city analyst asks how many bike-sharing trips were logged last year; ckan_analyze_datasets shows which resources can be queried and their columns, and ckan_datastore_search_sql runs the SQL that returns the figure.
Start from the country, not the portal. A researcher has no idea which portals cover Portugal; ckan_find_portals searches a live registry of CKAN portals worldwide.
What it will not do: the connector does not publish or edit datasets on any portal, and nothing runs by itself when a portal adds new data. Claude only searches while it answers you, on the desktop app where the extension is installed. The Integrations hub lists the platforms we document.
Five words before you install
The vocabulary Claude uses around this connector, in one minute.
- Connector
- The link you set up once between Claude and a service, so Claude can call it while it answers you.
- Tool
- One named thing a connector lets Claude do. Claude picks the ones it needs by itself; the directory sheet lists them by name.
- Authorization
- The access you grant Claude to a service. Public CKAN portals are open to everyone, so here it comes down to letting Claude use the tools.
- Approval
- The confirmation Claude waits for before it does something on your behalf, shown in the conversation when it matters.
- MCP
- The shared standard connectors are built on: it is what lets an assistant such as Claude talk to an outside service like a CKAN portal.
Connect CKAN to Claude in three steps
- 01
Find CKAN in your settings
Open Claude Desktop's settings, go to Customize, then Connectors, and look for the CKAN extension. On a Team or Enterprise workspace, an Owner or Primary Owner has to enable it for the organization before members can install it individually.
- 02
Start the installation
Launch it from its row and follow the prompts. If it stops responding later, Disconnect it and set it up again: that usually repairs a broken connection without anything else to do.
- 03
Check what you allow
Read any permission screen before you validate: it belongs to the service, not to Claude, and it is what sets the scope of the access. The portals themselves are public, so there is no personal account to hand over.
The 20 tools, grouped by what they do
CKAN MCP Server gives Claude 20 tools: 20 that read your account, 0 that change something in it.
One group only: the publisher marks all twenty as read-only, and each one consults public portal data. Names stay exactly as Claude shows them.
- 20 read
Tools index
- ckan_package_search
- ckan_find_relevant_datasets
- ckan_package_show
- ckan_list_resources
- ckan_organization_list
- ckan_organization_show
- ckan_organization_search
- ckan_datastore_search
- ckan_datastore_search_sql
- ckan_status_show
- ckan_tag_list
- ckan_group_list
- ckan_group_show
- ckan_group_search
- ckan_get_mqa_quality
- ckan_get_mqa_quality_details
- ckan_analyze_datasets
- ckan_catalog_stats
- sparql_query
- ckan_find_portals
What Claude reads (20)
20 toolsTwenty tools that search portals, read metadata and query open tables without touching anything.
ckan_package_search
Searches the datasets of a CKAN portal with Solr query syntax, the search language the portal itself understands. It is the precise instrument when you already know which fields you want to filter on and how.
Sourceckan-mcp-server.andy-pr.workers.dev · October 1, 2026 ↗
ckan_find_relevant_datasets
Ranks datasets by relevance to your question, scoring several fields with weights instead of returning raw matches, so the most fitting candidates come first.
Sourceckan-mcp-server.andy-pr.workers.dev · October 1, 2026 ↗
ckan_package_show
Opens the complete metadata of one dataset: resources, publishing organization, tags and every metadata field the portal holds.
Sourceckan-mcp-server.andy-pr.workers.dev · October 1, 2026 ↗
ckan_list_resources
Summarises every resource inside a dataset in a compact table: format, size, whether the DataStore is enabled for it, and the download link.
Sourceckan-mcp-server.andy-pr.workers.dev · October 1, 2026 ↗
ckan_organization_list
Lists every organization on a CKAN portal, meaning the bodies that publish and manage its datasets.
Sourceckan-mcp-server.andy-pr.workers.dev · October 1, 2026 ↗
ckan_organization_show
Shows the details of one specific organization on a portal, once you know which publisher you are after.
Sourceckan-mcp-server.andy-pr.workers.dev · October 1, 2026 ↗
ckan_organization_search
Looks for organizations whose name matches a pattern, a simpler route than a full dataset search when you only hold part of a publisher's name.
Sourceckan-mcp-server.andy-pr.workers.dev · October 1, 2026 ↗
ckan_datastore_search
Queries rows from a tabular resource held in the portal's DataStore, the part of CKAN that accepts SQL-like queries on tables.
Sourceckan-mcp-server.andy-pr.workers.dev · October 1, 2026 ↗
ckan_datastore_search_sql
Runs SQL queries on a DataStore resource, which lets Claude aggregate, filter and sort a public table to answer a numeric question directly.
Sourceckan-mcp-server.andy-pr.workers.dev · October 1, 2026 ↗
ckan_status_show
Checks whether a CKAN portal is reachable and reports the version it runs.
Sourceckan-mcp-server.andy-pr.workers.dev · October 1, 2026 ↗
ckan_tag_list
Lists the tags used on a portal with their counts, which reveals the vocabulary the publishers actually use.
Sourceckan-mcp-server.andy-pr.workers.dev · October 1, 2026 ↗
ckan_group_list
Lists the groups of a portal, the thematic collections that bring datasets together.
Sourceckan-mcp-server.andy-pr.workers.dev · October 1, 2026 ↗
ckan_group_show
Opens the details of one thematic group, for a focused view of a single theme on the portal.
Sourceckan-mcp-server.andy-pr.workers.dev · October 1, 2026 ↗
ckan_group_search
Finds groups whose name matches a pattern, handy when a portal names its themes in its own language. It complements the full group list.
Sourceckan-mcp-server.andy-pr.workers.dev · October 1, 2026 ↗
ckan_get_mqa_quality
Fetches the Metadata Quality Assessment score of a dati.gov.it dataset from data.europa.eu.
Sourceckan-mcp-server.andy-pr.workers.dev · October 1, 2026 ↗
ckan_get_mqa_quality_details
Lists every failing metadata quality metric of a dati.gov.it dataset, grouped by FAIR dimension, so the weak points show up one by one.
Sourceckan-mcp-server.andy-pr.workers.dev · October 1, 2026 ↗
ckan_analyze_datasets
Combines a dataset search with an inspection of the DataStore schema of each queryable resource it finds, in a single call.
Sourceckan-mcp-server.andy-pr.workers.dev · October 1, 2026 ↗
ckan_catalog_stats
Gives a statistical overview of a portal: total number of datasets and the breakdown by category, format and organization, with no query needed, in a single call.
Sourceckan-mcp-server.andy-pr.workers.dev · October 1, 2026 ↗
sparql_query
Runs a SPARQL SELECT query against any public SPARQL endpoint served over HTTPS, outside CKAN itself.
Sourceckan-mcp-server.andy-pr.workers.dev · October 1, 2026 ↗
ckan_find_portals
Searches the live datashades.info registry of about 950 CKAN portals worldwide, so you know where to look before searching any dataset.
Sourceckan-mcp-server.andy-pr.workers.dev · October 1, 2026 ↗
What Claude asks before acting
By default, Claude stops and asks for your go-ahead before each action it takes on your behalf. The publisher's guide shows the prompt you get on Claude Desktop the first time a CKAN tool is used.
On Team and Enterprise workspaces, owners decide whether members may let some actions through without being asked each time. They can also limit what a connector may do for the whole organization, for example keeping reading and closing writing, and nobody overrides that from their own account. Claude works with the rights of the person who installed it and nothing beyond; here the portals are public, so it sees what any visitor sees.
Which plans include it
None of the 819 sheets in the official directory shows availability by plan. Connector by connector, that answer is published nowhere: it is a real gap in the catalogue.
What is published is the general rule: desktop extensions such as this one install on Claude Desktop, while remote connectors are open to all users on Claude, Cowork, Claude Desktop and mobile. On Team and Enterprise, an Owner or Primary Owner turns a connector on for the organization first. For the current state of this one, check its sheet in the official directory.
Where this connector stops
A connector is not an automation. Claude calls these tools while it answers you; nothing fires when a portal publishes a new dataset.
The tool list is an observed floor, not a promise: an administrator can open actions that no public sheet shows. The verification badge is not a security audit, and Anthropic states on every sheet that it does not control which tools a publisher exposes. Only the ondata repository documents this connector; no Claude help article covers it. To compare with a connector tied to a private account, see the Claude agility-cms connector.
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