Build an Airtable dashboard with Claude

This is an end-to-end example: connect a data source over MCP, generate a dashboard from live records, and close the review loop on one link. Total time, start to shared link, is under fifteen minutes. The same shape works for any of the other examples — only the connection step changes.

Here's the finished dashboard, published to a canvas — click any tile or number to leave a comment, exactly as your team would:

The three moving parts

1. The Airtable MCP server gives Claude read access to your Airtable bases — tables, fields, and records — through a controlled set of tools. You approve what it can touch.
2. Claude pulls the records, rolls them up, and writes a single self-contained HTML dashboard. You iterate on it in the artifact panel until it's right.
3. Drafty turns that HTML into a stable link your team reviews. Comments pin to the exact element; Claude ships the fix to the same URL.

The generation step is fast now. The part this example is really about is the third one — getting the dashboard in front of people without losing their feedback to a screenshot circled in Preview.

Step 1 — Connect the Airtable MCP server

Airtable runs an official remote MCP server at https://mcp.airtable.com/mcp. You connect once; it authenticates over OAuth, so no token is pasted into a config file.

In Claude Code:

Then run /mcp inside Claude Code and follow the OAuth prompt to authorize the account. When you authorize, grant read scopes only — this dashboard never needs to write to Airtable.

In Claude Desktop: open Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, paste https://mcp.airtable.com/mcp, and authorize with OAuth the same way.

Step 2 — Pull the numbers

Ask Claude in plain language. It uses the MCP server's read tools to list your bases, read the table schema, and fetch records:

Claude lists the base, reads the schema, returns the figures, and you sanity-check them against the Airtable grid before going further. This is the moment to catch a wrong assumption — a filtered view you didn't mean to count, a linked-record field read as text, a status value you forgot existed — while it's cheap.

Step 3 — Build the dashboard

Once the numbers look right, ask for the artifact:

Claude renders it live in the artifact panel. Iterate in place — you're not regenerating from scratch:

• "Make the open/in-progress/done split a stacked bar."
• "Group the category breakdown by quarter."
• "Round the averages and right-align the numbers."

Step 4 — Publish to Drafty for review

A Claude artifact link is a preview, not a stable URL — iterate the artifact and the link you already sent now shows the old version. Ask Claude to publish it to a Drafty canvas instead, so the link you share always stays current:

Claude pushes the dashboard and hands back a drafty.im/canvas/… link that renders on any device. Send it — your team opens it in a browser, no login and no Claude account needed.

Step 5 — The review loop

This is the part that's not obvious until you've done it once.

A reviewer clicks the specific tile, chart, or number they want changed and leaves a pinned comment — "this open-tasks count looks high, is it counting the archived records too?" The comment is anchored to that element, not floating in a Slack thread. Claude reads the comments through the CLI, reruns the relevant Airtable query if needed, and pushes a revised dashboard to the same URL. The reviewer refreshes and sees the change; the thread stays attached to the element.

The mechanic matters because of what it removes. A Slack message about a chart produces "the number on the left looks wrong." A pinned comment on the actual tile produces "this — exclude the Archived status from the open count." One of those produces a correct revision; the other produces a guess.

Keeping it fresh

An MCP-generated dashboard is a snapshot — it holds the numbers Claude pulled when it built it; it doesn't re-query Airtable when someone opens the link. For a weekly review or a standing roll-up, that's fine.

To make it a live canvas that always shows today's figures, copy this prompt — Claude sets up the refresh for you and schedules it to run on its own:

The link stays stable while the content updates underneath it — see keeping a canvas updated automatically.

What to watch for

• Read-only, always. A reporting dashboard needs read access and nothing more. Scope the OAuth grant or personal access token to data.records:read, schema.bases:read, and workspacesAndBases:read.
• Check the figures before you share. The MCP returns exactly what you ask for — if your "open tasks" query reads the wrong view or counts archived records, the dashboard will confidently show the wrong number. Reconcile against the Airtable grid once.
• The link is the deliverable, not the artifact. Share the Drafty URL, not the Claude artifact preview — that's the one you can update in place.