akko-mcp-trino

Give your AI agents access to Trino without giving them your data.

akko-mcp-trino is a governed MCP server for Trino. Every tool call an agent makes carries the identity of the person it acts for; what that person may read is decided inside Trino, by the policy engine you already run (OPA, Ranger, or Trino's own access control). The server never reads on the user's behalf with a service account, and it never decides access on its own.

Why

Most MCP servers for SQL engines connect with one technical account. Every agent, every user, every prompt then reads with the same broad rights, and the only thing between a prompt injection and your customer table is the model's good will.

This server takes the opposite stance. The agent brings the user's token. The token becomes X-Trino-User. Trino applies that user's catalog scope, row filters and column masks, exactly as it does for a BI tool or a notebook.

Same question, same server, two users:

$ python examples/agent.py "Give me three customer e-mails with their country"

as alice_admin     marie.martin0@gmail.com, FR   thomas.devries1@outlook.com, DE   léa.dubois2@proton.me, ES
as carol_analyst   ***@gmail.com, FR             ***@outlook.com, FR              ***@proton.me, FR

That run is real: a Mistral model driving the tools, on a Trino behind Keycloak and OPA. The model did not know carol was restricted; it did not need to.

Highlights

• Identity, end to end. Verified JWT (JWKS, issuer, audience, expiry) → X-Trino-User, or the same JWT forwarded to Trino's own authenticator (TRINO_IDENTITY_MODE=jwt). No impersonation without a verified identity, no service credential in jwt mode.
• Read-only by construction. SQL is parsed into an AST and refused if a write appears anywhere in the tree, CTEs and subqueries included.
• Two principals. X-Agent-Key names the calling product (Cursor, Claude, your own agent) for quotas and audit; it is never a user.
• Standard discovery. RFC 9728 metadata and WWW-Authenticate on every 401, so hosts know where to log in.
• Quotas, revocation, audit. Per-user and per-agent limits, optional RFC 7662 introspection, one JSON audit line per call keyed by X-Request-Id — never the token.
• Any OIDC provider, any MCP host, any model. Keycloak, Entra ID, Okta… Cursor, Claude Desktop, VS Code, the Python SDK… Mistral, or any OpenAI-compatible model through the example agent.
• Small and proven. 1 700 lines, 230 tests at 100 % line and branch coverage (including an in-process suite on the real SDK for all three transports), a product-neutral guard in CI, and six live proofs (functional, adversarial, agent-driven, stdio, a real host, JWT passthrough on public https) on a real cluster.

Documentation

• Guide, prerequisites, configuration, examples, proofs: akko-ai.com/docs/akko-mcp-trino (also in English) and akko-ai.com/docs/exemples.
• Why we built it, and what the proofs taught us: the AKKO blog — start with Your AI agents see exactly what the user is allowed to see.
• Reference, in this repository: this README, examples/, CHANGELOG.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, SECURITY.md.

Contents

1. How it works
2. Compatibility
3. Prerequisites
4. Install and run
5. Connect an MCP host
6. Use it from an agent
7. The tools
8. What happens on a request
9. Configuration
10. Operations
11. Development
12. Design notes
13. Contributing
14. About AKKO

How it works

flowchart LR
    Host["MCP host<br/>(Cursor, Claude, VS Code, an agent)"]
    IdP["Identity provider<br/>(OIDC, JWKS)"]
    Server["akko-mcp-trino"]
    Trino["Trino"]
    Policy["Policy engine<br/>(OPA, Ranger, built-in)"]
    Data[("Data sources")]

    Host -- "1. login" --> IdP
    Host -- "2. tool call + Bearer JWT<br/>+ X-Agent-Key" --> Server
    Server -. "verify signature<br/>against JWKS" .-> IdP
    Server -- "3. SQL as X-Trino-User=alice" --> Trino
    Trino -- "4. may alice read this?" --> Policy
    Trino -- "5. rows, masked and filtered for alice" --> Server
    Server -- "6. result" --> Host
    Trino --> Data

The user logs in to the identity provider the platform already has. The MCP host sends the resulting JWT on every request. The server verifies it (signature against the provider's JWKS, issuer, audience, expiry), reads the subject, and runs the SQL in Trino as that subject. Trino asks its policy engine, applies the user's catalog scope, row filters and column masks, and returns only what the user could have read from any other client.

Two people asking the same question through the same server get two different answers. That is the whole point.

Compatibility

	Supported	Tested
Python	3.12, 3.13	3.12, 3.13 (CI)
Trino	351 and later (the X-Trino-User protocol header); http or https; password, or JWT passthrough	483 behind OPA, in-cluster http with impersonation and public https with JWT passthrough
Policy engines	OPA (trino-opa), Ranger (Trino plugin), Trino file-based access control	OPA with row filters and column masks
Identity providers	any OIDC provider publishing a JWKS	Keycloak 26
MCP	protocol 2025-06-18 via the official mcp SDK 1.30; transports streamable-http, sse and stdio	all three, official SDK client, in CI
MCP hosts	remote: anything that sends a bearer header (Cursor, Claude Desktop, VS Code, Le Chat connectors); local: any stdio host	Python SDK, the example agent
Models	any, the server never talks to a model	Mistral Small 3.2 through OpenRouter, driving the tools

Prerequisites

You need	Why	Notes
Python 3.12 or later	runtime	pip and a virtual environment
A reachable Trino coordinator	the engine	HTTP or HTTPS, any recent version (tested on 483)
Trino configured for one of the two identity modes	identity forwarding	impersonate: TRINO_USER allowed to impersonate in your access control (impersonation rules, or the equivalent in OPA / Ranger); jwt: Trino's OAUTH2/JWT authenticator pointed at your identity provider
A policy engine deciding for Trino	the governance	OPA (opa.policy.uri), Ranger, or Trino file-based rules. Without one, every user reads everything
An OIDC provider with a JWKS endpoint	identity	Keycloak, Entra ID, Okta, Dex… Tokens must carry iss, aud, exp, and a subject (preferred_username or sub)
An MCP host that can send a bearer header	the client	Cursor, Claude Desktop, VS Code, or any client built on the mcp SDK

Optional: a Prometheus to scrape /metrics, and — for revocation before expiry — an RFC 7662 introspection endpoint with a client registered for this server.

Install and run

pip install akko-mcp-trino

Or from source:

git clone https://github.com/AKKO-p/akko-mcp-trino.git
cd akko-mcp-trino
python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e .

The package installs a Python module (akko_mcp_trino) and a command (akko-mcp-trino); python -m akko_mcp_trino is the same entrypoint.

Point it at your Trino and your identity provider, then serve:

export TRINO_HOST=trino.example.internal
export TRINO_PORT=8080
export TRINO_USER=mcp-trino            # the account that connects and impersonates
export TRINO_CATALOG=iceberg

export MCP_AUTH_ENABLED=true
export MCP_AUTH_REQUIRED=true          # refuse requests without a verified identity
export MCP_JWKS_URL=https://idp.example.com/realms/data/protocol/openid-connect/certs
export MCP_OIDC_ISSUER=https://idp.example.com/realms/data
export MCP_OIDC_AUDIENCE=data-platform

python -m akko_mcp_trino

Before serving, akko-mcp-trino --check prints the effective configuration (never a secret) and exits with 2 if something would refuse to start. Then:

INFO:__main__:serving transport=streamable-http port=3000 auth=True strict=True

Check it is alive and can reach Trino:

curl -s localhost:3001/health   # {"status":"ok"}       never touches Trino
curl -s localhost:3001/ready    # {"status":"ready"}    runs a bounded SELECT 1
curl -s localhost:3001/metrics  # Prometheus exposition

To try it on a laptop without an identity provider, leave MCP_AUTH_ENABLED unset: every query then runs as TRINO_USER. Never run it that way where the data matters.

Container

A Dockerfile ships with the repository (non-root, health check, OCI labels); releases publish the image to ghcr.io/akko-p/akko-mcp-trino. Run it with the same environment variables, publishing ports 3000 (MCP) and 3001 (health).

Connect an MCP host

The host needs the user's access token from the identity provider. With MCP_RESOURCE_URL set, hosts that implement OAuth discovery find the provider on their own (see Discovery); otherwise paste the token.

Cursor, Claude Desktop, VS Code (mcp.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "trino": {
      "url": "http://localhost:3000/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer <the user's access token>",
        "X-Agent-Key": "<the key registered for this product, if any>"
      }
    }
  }
}

From Python, with the official SDK:

import anyio
from mcp import ClientSession
from mcp.client.streamable_http import streamablehttp_client

async def main(token: str):
    headers = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {token}", "X-Agent-Key": "my-agent-key"}
    async with streamablehttp_client("http://localhost:3000/mcp", headers=headers) as (read, write, _):
        async with ClientSession(read, write) as session:
            await session.initialize()
            result = await session.call_tool("execute_query", {"sql": "SELECT 1"})
            print(result.content[0].text)

anyio.run(main, "<token>")

streamable-http (/mcp) is the default and what current hosts expect. Set MCP_TRANSPORT=sse for older hosts (/sse); the guard is the same on both.

Local hosts over stdio

Claude Desktop, Cursor and Mistral Vibe can launch the server themselves. There is no request then, so the identity comes from the environment: the user's own access token, verified exactly like a bearer header would be, and bound to the process. Strict mode refuses to start without it.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "trino": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["akko-mcp-trino"],
      "env": {
        "MCP_TRANSPORT": "stdio",
        "TRINO_HOST": "trino.example.internal",
        "MCP_AUTH_ENABLED": "true", "MCP_AUTH_REQUIRED": "true",
        "MCP_JWKS_URL": "https://idp.example.com/realms/data/protocol/openid-connect/certs",
        "MCP_OIDC_ISSUER": "https://idp.example.com/realms/data",
        "MCP_OIDC_AUDIENCE": "data-platform",
        "MCP_USER_TOKEN": "<the user's access token>"
      }
    }
  }
}

uvx akko-mcp-trino runs the published package without installing anything.

Use it from an agent

examples/agent.py is a complete agent in eighty lines: any OpenAI-compatible model (Mistral on La Plateforme, through OpenRouter or LiteLLM; or any other provider), the MCP tools, the user's token. The model never sees the token; the server receives it on every tool call.

pip install akko-mcp-trino openai
export LLM_BASE_URL=https://api.mistral.ai/v1
export LLM_API_KEY=...
export LLM_MODEL=mistral-small-latest
export MCP_URL=http://localhost:3000/mcp
export USER_TOKEN=<the user's access token>
python examples/agent.py "Which catalogs can I see, and what is in them?"

Run it twice with two users' tokens and compare. The examples folder has the details.

The tools

Tool	Arguments	Returns
list_catalogs	—	the catalogs the user can see
list_schemas	catalog	schemas in that catalog
list_tables	catalog, schema	tables and views in that schema
describe_table	catalog, schema, table, sample_rows (0–20)	columns, types, comments; a governed sample when asked
search_columns	pattern (SQL LIKE), catalog (optional)	tables having a column matching the pattern
profile_table	catalog, schema, table	SHOW STATS: row count, distinct values, null fraction, ranges
explain_query	sql	Trino's plan for a read-only statement, without running it
execute_query	sql	{"columns": [...], "rows": [...], "row_count": n}

Every tool runs in Trino under the caller's identity, discovery included: metadata is data, and a user who may not read a schema does not list it either. Every description is written for a model: what the tool returns, and that a masked value or a missing row is the access policy, not an error to retry.

Every identifier is validated ([A-Za-z_][A-Za-z0-9_-]*) before it is placed in SQL. execute_query accepts any SQL Trino accepts, as long as it is a read: the statement is parsed into an AST and refused if it is more than one statement, or if an INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, MERGE, CREATE, DROP, ALTER, GRANT, CALL or SET appears anywhere in the tree — including inside a CTE, a subquery, or the statement an EXPLAIN explains. EXPLAIN ANALYZE is refused: it executes what it explains. Results are capped at TRINO_MAX_ROWS.

Errors come back to the agent as {"error": "..."}; a permission refusal from Trino is an ordinary error, not a crash.

What happens on a request

sequenceDiagram
    participant H as MCP host
    participant G as Guard (ASGI middleware)
    participant T as Tool
    participant Tr as Trino

    H->>G: POST /messages  Authorization, X-Agent-Key, X-Request-Id
    G->>G: request id: honoured or generated
    alt agent products registered and key missing or unknown
        G-->>H: 401  X-Reason: agent_key_missing | agent_key_unknown
    end
    G->>G: verify JWT (JWKS, iss, aud, exp) → Principal(subject, jti)
    alt no verified identity and MCP_AUTH_REQUIRED
        G-->>H: 401  WWW-Authenticate: Bearer resource_metadata=…  X-Reason: unauthenticated
    end
    opt MCP_INTROSPECTION_URL set
        G->>G: RFC 7662: is the token still active? (cached by jti)
        G-->>H: 401 revoked · 503 introspection_unavailable
    end
    opt rate limits set
        G-->>H: 429  Retry-After  X-Reason: rate_limited
    end
    G->>T: Principal and agent in ContextVars
    T->>T: validate identifiers · refuse writes
    T->>Tr: SQL with X-Trino-User = subject
    Tr-->>T: rows (masked, filtered by the policy engine)
    T->>G: audit line {request_id, tool, subject, agent, token_id, ok}
    G-->>H: result  X-Request-Id

Order matters. The agent key is checked before the token, so an unregistered product never triggers a JWKS lookup. Quotas are counted after authentication, so a forged token cannot consume the slot of the person it names. A refused request consumes nothing.

Configuration

Everything is read from the environment. Nothing is hardcoded.

Trino

Variable	Meaning	Default
TRINO_HOST, TRINO_PORT	the coordinator	localhost, 8080
TRINO_USER	the account the server connects as; it impersonates the caller	trino
TRINO_CATALOG	default catalog	system
TRINO_READ_ONLY	refuse writes in execute_query	true
TRINO_MAX_ROWS	result cap	100
TRINO_HTTP_SCHEME	http or https	http
TRINO_PASSWORD	password of TRINO_USER (Basic auth); refused over plain http	—
TRINO_VERIFY	TLS verification: true, false, or a path to a CA bundle	true
TRINO_REQUEST_TIMEOUT_SECONDS	per-request timeout on the Trino client	30
TRINO_IDENTITY_MODE	impersonate (connect as TRINO_USER, set X-Trino-User to the caller) or jwt (send the caller's verified bearer to Trino; needs https, no service password)	impersonate

Two ways to reach Trino as the user

Mode	How	What Trino needs	When
impersonate (default)	the server authenticates as TRINO_USER (Basic over https when TRINO_PASSWORD is set) and sets X-Trino-User to the verified caller	an impersonation rule allowing TRINO_USER → users (file-based access control, OPA or Ranger)	Trino authenticates with passwords, certificates or Kerberos
jwt	the caller's own bearer, already verified by the guard, is sent to Trino as its JWT; the server holds no credential at all	the OAUTH2 or JWT authenticator pointed at the same issuer	Trino already trusts your identity provider — the cleanest setup, proven live on a Trino behind Keycloak

Both fail closed: a password never travels over plain http, and the jwt mode never falls back to the service account when a request has no bearer.

Identity

Variable	Meaning	Default
MCP_AUTH_ENABLED	verify bearer tokens	false
MCP_AUTH_REQUIRED	refuse requests without a verified identity	false
MCP_JWKS_URL	the provider's JWKS endpoint	— (required when auth is enabled)
MCP_OIDC_ISSUER, MCP_OIDC_AUDIENCE	claims to enforce	—
MCP_RESOURCE_URL	public URL of this server; enables RFC 9728 discovery	— (off)
MCP_AGENT_KEYS	name:key,name:key — registered agent products; empty disables the check	— (off)

Auth enabled without a JWKS URL refuses to start: an authentication layer that cannot verify anything must not pretend to. A malformed MCP_AGENT_KEYS entry refuses to start for the same reason.

Guards

Variable	Meaning	Default
MCP_RATE_LIMIT_USER, MCP_RATE_LIMIT_AGENT	requests per window per user and per agent product; 0 disables	0, 0
MCP_RATE_LIMIT_WINDOW_SECONDS	the sliding window	60
MCP_INTROSPECTION_URL	RFC 7662 endpoint; enables the revocation check	— (off)
MCP_INTROSPECTION_CLIENT_ID, MCP_INTROSPECTION_CLIENT_SECRET	credentials the provider expects	— (required with the URL)
MCP_INTROSPECTION_TTL_SECONDS	how long a verdict is cached by jti	30

Serving

Variable	Meaning	Default
MCP_TRANSPORT	streamable-http, sse or stdio	streamable-http
MCP_PORT, MCP_HEALTH_PORT	listening ports	3000, 3001
MCP_SERVER_NAME	name announced to hosts	trino-mcp
MCP_USER_TOKEN	stdio only: the user's access token, verified like a bearer header	— (required in strict mode)

Operations

Two principals

A workspace key from Cursor or Claude is not a user. When MCP_AGENT_KEYS is set, every request must carry both:

Principal	Header	Says	Enforced by
End user	Authorization: Bearer <JWT>	for whom the query runs	JWKS here, then the policy engine in Trino
Agent product	X-Agent-Key: <key>	which product is calling	the registry here, for quotas and audit

Discovery

With MCP_RESOURCE_URL set, the server publishes RFC 9728 metadata without a token, and every 401 says where to go:

curl -s https://mcp.example.com/.well-known/oauth-protected-resource
# {"resource":"https://mcp.example.com","authorization_servers":["https://idp.example.com/realms/data"],"bearer_methods_supported":["header"]}

curl -si https://mcp.example.com/mcp | grep -i -e www-auth -e x-reason
# WWW-Authenticate: Bearer realm="trino-mcp", resource_metadata="https://mcp.example.com/.well-known/oauth-protected-resource"
# X-Reason: unauthenticated

authorization_servers stays empty unless MCP_OIDC_ISSUER is set; the server never guesses a provider.

Refusals

Every refusal carries X-Reason and the request id, never the token:

Status	X-Reason	Meaning
401	agent_key_missing, agent_key_unknown	products are registered and the key is absent or wrong
401	unauthenticated	no verified identity in strict mode
401	revoked	the provider says the token is no longer active
429	rate_limited	a window is full; Retry-After says when
503	introspection_unavailable	the provider could not be asked; the guard fails closed

Audit

Every response carries X-Request-Id — the one the edge sent, or one the server generated. Every tool call writes one JSON line to the mcp.audit logger keyed by that id:

{"request_id":"edge-42","tool":"execute_query","subject":"alice","agent":"cursor","token_id":"jti-9","ok":false,"error":"Access Denied: Cannot select from columns [email] in table customers"}

token_id is the JWT's jti. The record has no field that could hold the bearer. Join it with your gateway logs and Trino's query log on the request id.

Revocation before expiry

A signature and an exp prove a token was valid. With MCP_INTROSPECTION_URL set, the guard asks the provider (RFC 7662) and refuses a token whose active is false. Verdicts are cached by jti for MCP_INTROSPECTION_TTL_SECONDS. If the provider cannot answer, the request is refused with 503, because "unknown" is not "still valid".

Keycloak note: introspection is accepted only from a client that appears in the token's aud. Register this server as its own confidential client and add it to the audience mapper; the client that issued the token is not enough.

Quotas

Two in-memory sliding windows, one per user subject and one per agent product. Counters live in the process: with several replicas the quota is per replica.

Health and metrics

/health on the health port never touches Trino, so a liveness probe cannot kill the server because Trino is slow. /ready runs a bounded SELECT 1. /metrics exposes mcp_trino_queries_total, mcp_trino_query_errors_total and mcp_trino_query_duration_seconds.

Development

pip install -e ".[dev]"
ruff check akko_mcp_trino tests examples && ruff format akko_mcp_trino tests examples
ruff check akko_mcp_trino --select D100,D101,D102,D103,D105,D107   # every public name documented
mypy akko_mcp_trino           # the package ships py.typed and type-checks clean
pip-audit                     # no known vulnerability in the dependency tree
bash lint-vendor-neutral.sh   # fails if the package imports anything product-specific
pytest                        # 230 tests; line or branch coverage below 100 % fails the run
python -m build && twine check dist/*
akko-mcp-trino --check        # effective configuration, no secrets, exit 2 if it would not start

CI runs the same steps on Python 3.12 and 3.13, then builds the container image; CodeQL scans every push and Dependabot opens weekly update pull requests for pip, Actions and the base image. A v* tag publishes the package to PyPI (trusted publishing) and the image to GHCR — see release.yml.

Every module in akko_mcp_trino/ has one responsibility and its own test file:

Module	Responsibility
config.py	read the environment, neutral defaults
auth.py	JWT verification against JWKS, Principal
identity.py, agents.py	user and agent product in ContextVars
middleware.py	the guard: key, token, revocation, quotas, discovery, request id
discovery.py, ratelimit.py, revocation.py, audit.py	one guard each
sql_guard.py	identifier validation, read-only decision on the AST
tools.py, trino_client.py	the eight tools, the Trino connection
server.py, app.py, __main__.py	assembly, transport, entrypoint

The README is tested too: every variable listed here is read by config.py, and the defaults stated here are the defaults in the code.

Design notes

The guard is a pure ASGI middleware, not BaseHTTPMiddleware. The latter runs the downstream in a separate task and breaks ContextVar propagation: the identity would never reach the tools. This was verified with concurrent sessions of two users on both transports — zero crossed responses.

Mounting is transport-independent. One code path builds the transport app and mounts the guard, whatever the transport. The guard once lived only on the branch the default transport never took; a test now asserts it for both.

Every tool carries the identity, not only execute_query. Version 0.1 ran discovery as the service account; a restricted user could list what the engine would hide from them. Fixed in 0.2 with a test that walks every tool.

Read-only is decided on the AST, anywhere in the tree. A leading-keyword check lets WITH w AS (DELETE FROM t) SELECT 1 through. So did a root-node check, until a live adversarial proof caught it. The guard now walks the whole tree.

Identity comes from the token, never from a header. A caller sending X-Trino-User or X-Forwarded-User changes nothing; the subject forwarded to Trino is the verified JWT subject.

The server does not decide access. It carries identity. Putting policy in the server would duplicate — and eventually contradict — what the engine already enforces for every other client.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md for the ground rules (tests first, 100 % coverage, product-neutral, fail closed) and SECURITY.md for reporting a vulnerability privately. Changes are tracked in CHANGELOG.md.

About AKKO

akko-mcp-trino is built and maintained by AKKO, a French company working on governed access for AI agents to enterprise data, in place, on the engines and identity providers customers already run. This server is the first brick of that work, extracted from the AKKO platform where it has run in production since July 2026 and released so that anyone running Trino can put identity in front of their agents today.

If you run Trino behind Ranger or OPA and want a hand wiring this up, or want to see the rest of the platform, say hello.

Author: Abderrahmen Dridi (@ab2dridi) · Issues: github.com/AKKO-p/akko-mcp-trino/issues

License

Apache 2.0. See LICENSE.