pbirb-mcp

An MCP server for editing Power BI Report Builder paginated reports (.rdl) through Claude (Desktop, CLI, or any MCP client). 140+ tools cover the gaps that otherwise force hand-written XML: report creation, data sources and datasets, calculated fields, dataset and tablix filters, groupings (row, column, matrix), sorting, charts, headers and footers, body composition, layout containers, positioning, styling, page setup, pagination, advanced parameters, embedded images, interactivity (actions, tooltips, document map), transactions, and validation.

The server speaks JSON-RPC 2.0 over stdio. It opens an .rdl from disk, mutates it in place via lxml, validates structure, and writes atomically — a failed save never leaves a half-written report or scrubs the original.

Stability

Pre-1.0. The tool surface — tool names, inputSchema, output shapes, error semantics — is the contract. While on 0.x, MINOR releases may include a small breaking change with a migration note in CHANGELOG.md; after v1.0, breaking changes require MAJOR. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the full bump rules adapted from SemVer for an MCP tool surface.

Pin to a MINOR while on 0.x (e.g. pbirb-mcp~=0.1) if your prompts depend on specific tool names or schemas.

Quick start

1. Install

The simplest path is uv + PyPI — no clone, no venv, no install step:

uvx pbirb-mcp

uvx fetches the package into a throwaway environment, runs the pbirb-mcp console script, and exits. The MCP server speaks JSON-RPC over stdio, so any MCP client (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, etc.) can spawn it directly.

For local development against this codebase instead:

git clone https://github.com/mafaq229/pbirb-mcp
cd pbirb-mcp
uv venv .venv
uv pip install --python .venv/bin/python -e ".[dev]"

Verify the binary works:

printf '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"initialize","params":{}}\n' \
  | .venv/bin/pbirb-mcp

You should see a single JSON-RPC response with protocolVersion, capabilities.tools, and serverInfo.name = "pbirb-mcp".

2. Wire into Claude Desktop

Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS) or %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json (Windows):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pbirb": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["pbirb-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. The hammer icon should show pbirb and the 140+ tools listed below.

To enable file logging, add an env block — but keep it platform-appropriate. PBIRB_MCP_LOG_FILE takes an OS-native path: a Unix path like /tmp/pbirb-mcp.log only works on macOS/Linux. On Windows use a Windows path (e.g. %TEMP%\\pbirb-mcp.log). See Logging. When unset, logs go to stderr, which Claude Desktop captures in its MCP debug pane on every platform.

For development against a local checkout, swap the args for ["--from", "/absolute/path/to/pbirb-mcp", "pbirb-mcp"] so uvx runs your working tree instead of the published version.

3. Wire into Claude Code

claude mcp add pbirb -- uvx pbirb-mcp

Or add to .mcp.json at the workspace root:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pbirb": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["pbirb-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Or install it as a Claude Code plugin — one command instead of editing config by hand (it wires up the same uvx pbirb-mcp server for you):

/plugin marketplace add mafaq229/pbirb-mcp
/plugin install pbirb-mcp

... [View full README on GitHub](https://github.com/mafaq229/pbirb-mcp#readme)