SchemaBrain + Cline
~1 minute: install SchemaBrain, run schemabrain init --host manual, paste the printed block into Cline’s MCP settings, ask the agent about your database.
SchemaBrain is the trust and intelligence layer between Cline’s agent and your Postgres database — twelve read-only MCP tools, validated metrics, tamper-evident audit. Cline isn’t auto-wired by the activation wizard (there’s no --host cline), so you wire it with the --host manual snippet — which init prints in Cline’s exact mcpServers shape, ready to paste. Works on macOS, Linux, and Windows.
1. Install and generate the snippet
postgresql+psycopg://... URL) or 2. Try with sample data (a 12-table SaaS fixture spins up in Docker; ~$0.03 to index). It introspects the schema, classifies columns for PII, optionally curates entities/metrics/joins, and — because you passed --host manual — prints the MCP entry to stdout instead of writing a host file. The printed block is already wrapped in mcpServers, exactly the shape Cline expects:
schemabrain==<version> pin keeps restarts reproducible; if uvx isn’t on your PATH, init emits the absolute path to your installed schemabrain entry point instead (still valid, just machine-specific).
2. Open Cline’s MCP settings
In VS Code:- Click the Cline icon in the sidebar.
- Click the MCP Servers icon (the stacked-server icon) at the top of the Cline panel.
- In the Configure tab, click Configure MCP Servers — this opens Cline’s
cline_mcp_settings.json.
3. Paste the entry
Paste the block from step 1. Ifcline_mcp_settings.json already lists other servers, merge just the schemabrain key into the existing mcpServers object rather than replacing the file:
Optional — auto-approve the read-only tools. All twelve SchemaBrain tools are read-only (there is no write tool and no raw-SQL tool), so it’s safe to enable auto-approve for them from Cline’s MCP Servers panel if you’d rather not approve each call by hand. The PII firewall and the tamper-evident audit log still apply to every call.
4. Ask the agent
list the entities SchemaBrain knows aboutIf Cline calls
list_entities and reports the entities curated during init, you’re done. Otherwise run schemabrain doctor --verify for an end-to-end smoke test that doesn’t need an Anthropic key, and confirm the --store-path and SCHEMABRAIN_DATABASE_URL in your pasted entry match what init printed.