How agents work with OpenBI
OpenBI Studio gives an AI agent the same hands you have. Through about 150 tools it reads and changes the project you have open: sources and queries, the model and its measures, report pages, predictions and notebooks. You see each change as it happens, and nothing leaves your computer unless you ask.
The studio’s agent endpoint
OpenBI Studio has an MCP endpoint, the Model Context Protocol that the Claude app, Claude Code, Cursor, ChatGPT’s desktop app and other agents speak. It runs inside the studio:
- It listens on this computer only, at
http://127.0.0.1:5739/mcp, or the next free port when 5739 is taken. - It answers only clients that present the studio’s agent key. It has no sign-in page of its own.
- Agents reach it through
OpenBI.Studio.exe --mcp, a small connector their app starts. It finds the studio open on this computer and its key by itself, and starts the studio when none is open and the agent uses one of its tools. The endpoint’s port and key can change, so the connector is what agents’ settings hold.
Everything the agent does goes to the studio you have open, so you watch it work. Connect your AI agent takes one click; Connect your agent has every client and the key.
Your company’s OpenBI Server has an MCP address of its own, once its administrator turns AI agents on: there an agent reads the published reports and models as you, with your roles, and changes nothing. See Connect your AI agent to OpenBI Server.
The agent’s hands
The agent works through the same operations you use in the studio, so it can build as well as answer. This is where OpenBI is strongest: you ask in business words, and the agent turns the question into queries, measures and pages you can keep.
| Area | What the agent can do |
|---|---|
| Projects and versions | Open, create and import projects (from Power BI Desktop, .pbix, .pbip), copy one for another supplier, customer or market, connect live to Analysis Services, Power BI or Fabric, see what changed, save and restore versions. |
| Data and queries | Browse sources, write M queries (Open Query’s language, compatible with Power Query M) or DuckDB SQL queries step by step, preview them, and apply them to the model with Close & apply, as you would. Ask you to sign in to a source. |
| The model | Read and change tables, columns, relationships and measures, with formats, display folders and descriptions; format OAX; propose a measure in your formula bar. |
| OAX queries | Answer questions with OAX queries, which agents write as they write DAX (OAX is compatible with it), show a query in the OAX view, compare two versions of a measure and time them. |
| Report pages | Write, edit, check and look at report pages; copy visuals and whole pages, also from another project; filters, themes, page order; slides and what-if pages; export a visual’s data. From 0.3.78, a page measure defined the same on several pages is pointed out when a page is written or checked, and measure_set with from_page makes it one of the project’s own measures, taking its copies off the pages (report_undo puts them back). |
| Roles | Roles, row filters, groups, and who sees what. |
| Predictions, notebooks and analytics | Churn, forecasts and scores from the business question; notebooks in OAX, SQL and C#; operations research, quantitative finance and networks; versions a person approves (see Agents and notebooks). |
| Lakes and OpenBI Server | OpenBI Lake’s lakes, loads and backups; publishing to OpenBI Server and pulling pages edited there, when you ask. |
MCP tools lists every tool with what it does. A plug-in adds tools of its own while it is on (see OpenBI SDK). A call made just after a project opens waits until its engine is ready, up to ten minutes, and says why if none comes.
Copies of pages and projects
New in 0.3.74 Three tools copy as you would with the clipboard and Import pages… (see Pages from another project):
report_copy- Visuals of a page, several or all of them (as Ctrl+A), to another page, or from another project’s page: with the page measures they use, their layout kept. It says which of their fields this model doesn’t have.
report_import- Whole pages of another project, open in another studio window or recent, with their page measures, filters, settings, pictures and files. With no project named, it lists the projects and their pages, and imports nothing. One change: the agent’s undo takes it back.
project_copy- The open project, copied under a new name and opened: the same setup for another supplier, customer or market, for the agent to adapt with you.
What a copied project carries: the model as it is defined (tables and their queries, measures, relationships, roles, data sources and a live connection), the report pages with their page measures, theme and files, notebooks and analytics with their versions (predictions as they are: one is kept or deleted, never altered), your own files in the project, and the model’s data as it is now, so the copy opens with it at once. It is named anew wherever it carries the project’s name, and gets identities of its own.
What it never carries: a secret (credentials stay in your account’s own store, which the copy’s sources use as any project’s do), the original’s versions (the copy starts a history of its own, whose first version says what it was copied from), where the original was published (publishing the copy makes a new item, and never replaces the original’s report), and this computer’s caches and sign-ins. A copy can’t take the original’s name: published, it would replace the original’s report.
You see every change
Each thing the agent does in the studio, a query step, a measure saved, a page written, is a line in the Activity panel as it happens, marked as the agent’s, with the agent’s name and the tool it used. A call that fails is there too, with why. The windows it works in show what it does: Transform data shows its queries, the Report view its pages.
New in 0.3.75 When the agent applies its queries, Transform data shows Close & apply pressed and the apply in its status bar (“Agent: Close & apply · …”), then closes, as when you press it. If other queries still have changes not applied, it stays open and says which. A query the agent goes on with after Transform data was closed is opened again by itself. The agent shapes the queries, applies them, and only then builds measures and pages on them, as you would.
The activity is kept, a file a day for each project, in your account’s local application data (on Windows %LOCALAPPDATA%\OpenBI\Activity), outside the project and its versions. The agent can read it too, when you ask what was done and by whom.
It never takes your keyboard
What an agent starts never brings OpenBI Studio to the front. A window the agent’s work needs, Transform data or a sign-in, opens behind the app you are working in, and its loads show no Refresh dialog. A studio an agent starts opens the same way.
When you have to act, to sign in, allow a script, approve writing outside this computer or install a plug-in, the studio asks for your attention without taking the keyboard: on Windows its taskbar button flashes, on a Mac its Dock icon bounces. The agent’s call waits for you, and the agent tells you which window waits.
Your credentials stay yours
No tool takes or returns a password, key or token. When a source needs a sign-in, the agent asks the studio, and you type the credentials into the studio’s own Sign in to window: the agent learns only whether you signed in. It can see whether this computer has a sign-in for a source, never the secret. More in Privacy.
The guide for agents
When an agent connects, the studio gives it a short briefing: start from what is open, use the model’s measures, check pages before calling them done, and leave credentials to you. Everything else OpenBI knows about working in the studio is in its guide for agents, which the agent searches when it needs it (guide_search) and reads whole (guide_read):
- the guide itself: data, the model, measures, report pages and filters, live models, Power BI projects, lakes, sharing, security, predictions, notebooks, optimization, statistics;
- the report reference: every component of a report page and its attributes;
- the analytics catalog’s recipes;
- every tool’s description, and what each plug-in that is on says about its tools.
The search runs in the studio, offline, and works without a project open.