PlyDB: The Universal Database Gateway for AI Agents

Real-time conversational analytics with zero data movement. Bridge your AI to live sources without the ETL tax. Immediate insights, where your data lives.

PlyDB is a secure, unified access point for AI agents to query data in-place. From SQL databases like Postgres and MySQL, flat files like CSV and Excel, or cloud sources like Google Sheets and S3, PlyDB can query across them all with standard SQL - no data warehouse necessary.

PlyDB is:

Simple: Deploy in minutes on a local machine with no additional infrastructure. Connect your agents to live data without the friction of building ETL pipelines.
Secure: Control which data sources your agents can access. Read-only by default.
Versatile: Query across different data sources through a single interface. Integrate your agents via CLI or Model Context Protocol (MCP).

Demo

PlyDB can connect with a wide variety of data sources and integrate with any AI agent that supports CLI tools or MCP.

Here is a demo with Claude Desktop + PlyDB + Revenue Data:

Where does PlyDB fit in?

 ┌─────────────────┐ SQL ┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
 │     AI Agent    │────▶│               PlyDB                  │
 │(Claude, ChatGPT,│◀────│                                      │
 │ etc.)           │     │  ┌─────────────────────────────────┐ │
 └─────────────────┘     │  │          Query Engine           │ │
                         │  │   (Access control, Planning,    │ │
                         │  │    Optimization & Execution)    │ │
                         │  └───────────────┬─────────────────┘ │
                         │                  │                   │
                         │     ┌────────────┼────────────┐      │
                         └─────┼────────────┼────────────┼──────┘
                               ▼            ▼            ▼
                          ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐
                          │PostgreSQL│ │  MySQL   │ │ S3/Local │
                          │ Database │ │ Database │ │  Files   │
                          └──────────┘ └──────────┘ └──────────┘

Why PlyDB?

Agentic Data Analysis: Unleash the full potential of AI agents by allowing them to write sophisticated SQL and perform complex data analysis autonomously. Agents can use either the PlyDB CLI or MCP server to discover tables, inspect schemas, and understand your data's semantics.
Zero ETL (Query In-Place): Eliminate the need for expensive and brittle ETL pipelines. PlyDB lets your agents query your data exactly where it lives - whether it's a production database, a cloud-hosted spreadsheet, or a data lake.
Read-Only Guardrails: PlyDB is a read-only "look, don't touch" system by default. Your AI can analyze information and find patterns, but it cannot delete, edit, or alter your original records unless you explicitly allow it to.
Cross-Source Queries: Join tables across MySQL, PostgreSQL, CSV, and more in a single query.
Operational Simplicity: Designed to be up and running in minutes without additional infrastructure dependencies.
Open Source & Extensible: Built on an open-source foundation, PlyDB ensures transparency, security, and no vendor lock-in.

Example Use Cases

When your AI agent has a secure, real-time view of your data, it evolves from a chatbot into a Strategic Partner — one that can answer complex questions about your business the moment you ask them.

DevOps

Prompt: "Review our app logs in S3 for errors from the past week. Cross-reference with our codebase and database replica to identify affected customers and diagnose root causes. Open PRs with fixes for the most severe issues, and draft a summary our PM and CSM teams can use."

Strategic Sales & Retention

Prompt: "Analyze our top 20 accounts by revenue. Cross-reference their support tickets with their recent product usage. Generate a churn-risk dashboard and draft personalized 'Value Review' emails for the three accounts with the lowest activity."

Marketing Performance & Optimization

Prompt: "Look at our ad spend across Google and Facebook, then compare it with our actual transaction data. Create a chart showing the ROAS trend over the last 90 days and identify which specific campaign we should move budget into to maximize next month's yield."

Revenue Operations (RevOps)

Prompt: "Audit our active seat counts against our signed contracts in the Google Sheet. Identify all overages, calculate the total unbilled revenue, and build a summary table that the billing team can use to issue invoices."

Executive Insights

Prompt: "I need a high-level summary of our business health. Pull the MRR from the CRM, the infrastructure costs from our logs, and the headcount from the HR spreadsheet. Build a financial health dashboard and suggest three areas where we can improve our operating margin."

Genomics & Bioinformatics

Prompt: "Query the variant_calls table to find the top 10 most frequent SNPs found in samples labeled as 'resistant' to Penicillin, excluding variants found in the 'control' group."

Public Health & Epidemiology

Prompt: "Calculate the rolling 12-month average of ER admissions for asthma by zip code".

Supported Data Sources

PlyDB abstracts the complexity of different storage formats into a single relational view:

Installation

Quick install (macOS / Linux)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kineticloom/plydb/main/install.sh | sh

Quick install (Windows — PowerShell)

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kineticloom/plydb/main/install.ps1 | iex

Options

Manual download

Pre-built binaries for all platforms are available on the Releases page.

Build from source

make build

AI agents + PlyDB via MCP

Deciding between MCP vs CLI? See the FAQ for recommendations.

AI agents can connect to PlyDB via MCP.

Install PlyDB (we recommend using the quick install process).

Then follow your specific agent's instructions for configuring MCP:

Claude Desktop + PlyDB tutorial - full tutorial querying CSV files in Claude Desktop via MCP
ChatGPT
OpenCode
Gemini

AI agents + PlyDB via CLI Agent Skill

Deciding between MCP vs CLI? See the FAQ for recommendations.

AI agents can also use PlyDB directly via the plydb CLI when provided context on how to do so via an Agent Skill.

Install PlyDB (we recommend using the quick install process).

Then download the Agent Skill bundle (plydb_skill.zip) and follow your specific agent's instructions for installing skills:

Claude Code + PlyDB tutorial - full tutorial querying CSV files in Claude Code via Agent Skill + CLI
Claude Code - Agent Skill configuration
Claude
Codex
Gemini CLI
OpenClaw
OpenCode

Configuring data sources

Pro tip: If you have the PlyDB Agent Skill installed, you can ask your agent to work with you on data source configuration instead of writing a config file manually.

Data sources are configured via the PlyDB config file.

You can configure more than one type of data source in a config file, depending on your needs, and query across all of them.

To guide your AI agent's understanding of the semantics of your data, PlyDB can automatically scan your data sources and provide your AI agent with semantic context - schema, tables, columns, and comment metadata. You can further enrich this context by overlaying your own descriptions or AI-generated annotations.

Examples of configuring data sources:

[Query CSV files](examples/co

Plydb

Install / Use

README