Build an Amplitude retention dashboard with Claude

This is an end-to-end example: connect a data source over MCP, generate a dashboard from live numbers, 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 Amplitude MCP server gives Claude read access to your Amplitude project — charts, funnels, retention, cohorts, events — through a controlled set of tools. It inherits your own Amplitude permissions; you approve what it can touch.
2. Claude pulls the numbers 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 Amplitude MCP server

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

In Claude Code:

Then run /mcp inside Claude Code and follow the Amplitude OAuth prompt to authorize the account. Confirm it's working by asking "What Amplitude projects can I access?" — a list of your projects means you're connected.

In Claude Desktop: open Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, name it Amplitude, paste https://mcp.amplitude.com/mcp, and authorize with OAuth the same way. (EU-residency customers use https://mcp.eu.amplitude.com/mcp instead.)

Step 2 — Pull the numbers

Ask Claude in plain language. It uses the MCP server's read tools to query your charts, funnels, and retention reports directly:

Claude calls Amplitude, returns the figures, and you sanity-check them against your Amplitude project before going further. This is the moment to catch a wrong assumption — the wrong cohort, an event you didn't expect, a funnel ordered differently than the report — 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 funnel the hero and put retention underneath."
• "Add the previous cohort's retention as a dotted comparison line."
• "Show drop-off as a percentage between each funnel step."

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 funnel step, retention curve, or number they want changed and leaves a pinned comment — "this activation step looks too high, are we counting users who never finished onboarding?" The comment is anchored to that element, not floating in a Slack thread. Claude reads the comments through the CLI, reruns the relevant Amplitude 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 funnel number looks off." A pinned comment on the actual step produces "this — define activation as completing onboarding, not just opening the app." 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 Amplitude when someone opens the link. For a weekly review or a board-ready snapshot, 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 retention dashboard needs read access and nothing more. Have an admin scope the grant to USE_MCP_READ.
• Check the figures before you share. The MCP returns exactly what you ask for — if your "activation" funnel uses a looser event than your team's real definition, or you pull the wrong cohort, the dashboard will confidently show the wrong number. Reconcile against your Amplitude charts 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.