Airtable Formula

Formula editor, MCP server, and AI skills for VS Code

Not affiliated with Airtable Inc. This is a community-maintained project.

Experimental — This project is under active development and not intended for production use. APIs, tools, and behavior may change without notice.

Why this exists

Airtable's public Web API has never exposed some of the most common tasks builders actually need: creating a formula field, tweaking a view's filter set, installing an extension, or validating a formula before it breaks production. The official Airtable MCP server is a thin wrapper over that same REST API, so it inherits every one of those gaps.

airtable-user-mcp is an add-on to the official Airtable MCP, not a replacement. It uses Airtable's own internal API (the one the web UI uses) to cover exactly the surface area the REST API can't reach. Register both servers in your AI client and your assistant gets the full Airtable automation experience — records over HTTP via the official MCP, plus schema, formulas, views, and extensions via this one.

What airtable-user-mcp adds on top of the official Airtable MCP

This is a coverage map, not a "pick one" decision — the two servers are complementary and designed to run side-by-side.

Sources: Airtable's official MCP docs, Airtable Web API reference, and the UNSUPPORTED_FIELD_TYPE_FOR_CREATE rollup thread.

Use both MCPs together

airtable-user-mcp is additive. Register the official Airtable MCP following Airtable's setup guide, then add this one alongside it in the same mcpServers block:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "airtable-user-mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "airtable-user-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Your MCP client will expose every tool from both servers. The two entries are independent — rename the keys (airtable, airtable-official, airtable-user-mcp, etc.) however makes sense for your workflow.

What's In This Repo

This monorepo ships two products from one source tree:

Demo

Features

VS Code Extension

• Formula Editor — Syntax highlighting, IntelliSense, beautify / minify for .formula files
• MCP Server — One-click MCP registration for multiple IDEs
• AI Skills — Auto-install Airtable-specific skills, rules, and workflows for AI coding assistants
• Airtable Login — Credentials in OS keychain, browser-based auth with auto-refresh
• Dashboard — React webview with Overview, Setup, and Settings tabs

MCP Server (62 Tools)

Manage Airtable bases with capabilities not available through the official REST API:

See the full tool reference in packages/mcp-server/README.md.

Supported IDEs

The extension auto-configures MCP for all major AI-enabled editors:

Don't use VS Code? Use the standalone MCP server directly:

npx airtable-user-mcp

Find Us

Requirements

• VS Code ^1.100.0 (or any fork exposing the McpServerDefinitionProvider API)
• Node.js — bundled via the VS Code runtime; no separate install needed
• Google Chrome (or Edge / Chromium) — the Airtable login flow uses Patchright in headless mode. Falls back to msedge on Windows and chromium on Linux. The extension shows an actionable warning if no supported browser is detected.

Development

This is a pnpm monorepo.

pnpm install          # install all packages
pnpm build            # build shared → webview → mcp bundle → extension
pnpm package          # build + create airtable-formula-X.Y.Z.vsix
pnpm test             # run all unit tests
pnpm dev              # start webview dev server (browser preview)

How the MCP server is bundled: scripts/bundle-mcp.mjs esbuilds packages/mcp-server/src/ into packages/extension/dist/mcp/. Then scripts/prepare-package-deps.mjs vendors patchright, patchright-core, and otpauth into dist/node_modules/ before vsce package runs. The VSIX is fully self-contained.

Support This Project

This project is built and maintained with the help of AI coding tools. If you find it useful and want to support continued development (new tools, updates, bug fixes), you can contribute by gifting Claude Code credits — the primary tool used to build this project.

Interested? Open an issue or reach out to discuss feature requests and sponsorship.

License

MIT