SchemaBrain + Zed

60 seconds: install SchemaBrain, run schemabrain init --host manual, paste the printed snippet into Zed’s context-server settings, restart Zed, ask the assistant about your database.

Zed is a stdio MCP client — its AI assistant launches MCP servers as subprocesses and speaks JSON-RPC over stdin/stdout, the same wire shape as Claude Code and Cursor. SchemaBrain doesn’t ship a --host zed flag yet (Zed isn’t in the wizard’s choices tuple), so the working path is --host manual + paste-into-config.

Install

uvx schemabrain init --host manual
# or install first: pipx install schemabrain (or: pip install schemabrain)

The wizard prompts you to pick 1. Connect my own Postgres (paste a postgresql+psycopg://... URL) or 2. Try with sample data (a 12-table SaaS fixture spins up in Docker; ~$0.03 to index). Press Enter to take the default (2). It then introspects the schema, classifies columns for PII, optionally calls Anthropic to suggest entities/metrics/joins, and prints a ready-to-paste JSON entry to stdout instead of writing into a host config. The block looks like:

{
  "schemabrain": {
    "command": "uvx",
    "args": [
      "schemabrain==0.6.0",
      "serve",
      "--url-env", "SCHEMABRAIN_DATABASE_URL",
      "--store-path", "/ABSOLUTE/PATH/TO/schemabrain.db"
    ],
    "env": {
      "SCHEMABRAIN_DATABASE_URL": "postgresql+psycopg://..."
    }
  }
}

Paste into Zed’s settings

Open Zed’s settings.json (Cmd+Shift+P → “zed: open settings”) and merge the printed entry into the context_servers block:

{
  "context_servers": {
    "schemabrain": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["schemabrain==0.6.0", "serve", "--url-env", "SCHEMABRAIN_DATABASE_URL", "--store-path", "/ABSOLUTE/PATH/TO/schemabrain.db"],
      "env": {
        "SCHEMABRAIN_DATABASE_URL": "postgresql+psycopg://..."
      }
    }
  }
}

Zed’s MCP surface evolves quickly — consult the Zed docs on MCP / context servers for the current key name and config schema. The command / args / env shape we emit is the standard MCP server spec, so it should drop into whichever key Zed’s docs name today.

Restart Zed and ask

Restart Zed (Cmd+Q on macOS / quit-and-relaunch on Linux — Zed only re-reads settings.json on cold start of the assistant subsystem). Open the assistant panel and ask:

list the entities SchemaBrain knows about

If the assistant calls list_entities and reports user, order, etc., you’re done. If not, run schemabrain doctor --verify to smoke-test the wiring without needing an Anthropic key. Next: First 5 Queries exercises each load-bearing mechanism (read-only, PII refusal, audit chain, structured recovery) in ~10 minutes.

What you get

12 MCP tools, none of which can write. Full list in /mechanism/read-only.
PII-aware refusal at the get_metric boundary. SchemaBrain defaults to blocking credential, payment_card, and government_id. Details in /mechanism/pii-taxonomy.
Tamper-evident audit chain. Every tool call lands in an append-only mcp_audit table with a SHA256 chain hash. Details in /mechanism/audit-chain.
Structured recovery envelopes. When get_metric refuses or fails, the response is a typed contract Zed’s assistant can act on programmatically. Details in /mechanism/structured-recovery.

Troubleshooting

Zed doesn’t list schemabrain in the assistant panel — confirm the entry is under the right key in settings.json (Zed’s MCP key name has changed across versions; check the latest Zed docs). Save and restart Zed.
Paths fail with “no such file” — Zed runs the subprocess in a different working directory than your shell. Use absolute paths in args (run realpath ./schemabrain.db and which schemabrain).
postgresql:// URL fails with ModuleNotFoundError — use postgresql+psycopg:// (psycopg v3 scheme). schemabrain init auto-rewrites the bare scheme during the wizard.
onnxruntime install fails on Apple Silicon + Python 3.12 — downgrade to Python 3.11 or pass --no-embed to degrade semantic search to keyword-only.

Full setup reference: docs/setup.md (wizard) · docs/setup/manual.md (manual flow, logs, troubleshooting).

​SchemaBrain + Zed

​Install

​Paste into Zed’s settings

​Restart Zed and ask

​What you get

​Troubleshooting