Build a Chargebee subscription 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 Chargebee Data Lookup MCP server gives Claude read access to your Chargebee site — customers, subscriptions, invoices, transactions, and the product catalog — through a controlled set of tools. 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 Chargebee Data Lookup MCP server

Chargebee runs hosted remote MCP servers per site. The Data Lookup server reads your billing data and lives at a URL keyed to your subdomain and data center — https://YOUR-SUBDOMAIN.mcp.chargebee.com/data_lookup_agent (use mcp.eu.chargebee.com or mcp.au.chargebee.com if your site is in the EU or AU region). You connect once over HTTP; 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 OAuth prompt to authorize the account. OAuth scopes the connection to the signed-in Chargebee user's access level, so a read-only role keeps this dashboard read-only.

In Claude Desktop: open Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, paste your https://YOUR-SUBDOMAIN.mcp.chargebee.com/data_lookup_agent URL, and authorize with OAuth the same way.

Step 2 — Pull the numbers

Ask Claude in plain language. It uses the Data Lookup server's read tools to fetch real data — customers, subscriptions, invoices, transactions:

Claude calls Chargebee, returns the figures, and you sanity-check them against the Chargebee dashboard before going further. This is the moment to catch a wrong assumption — a test-site key, a currency mix, a subscription status you didn't expect — 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 MRR the biggest number and put churn rate right under it."
• "Add a 6-month MRR trend line."
• "Format the currency and round to whole dollars."

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 churn rate looks high, are we counting trial cancellations?" The comment is anchored to that element, not floating in a Slack thread. Claude reads the comments through the CLI, reruns the relevant Chargebee 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 trial cancellations from the churn 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 Chargebee 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 subscription dashboard needs read access and nothing more. Authorize as a read-only user, or scope the API key accordingly.
• Check the figures before you share. The MCP returns exactly what you ask for — if your "MRR" query double-counts annual plans or includes canceled-but-not-expired subscriptions, the dashboard will confidently show the wrong number. Reconcile against the Chargebee dashboard 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.