Build a Cloudflare traffic 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 Cloudflare GraphQL Analytics MCP server gives Claude read access to your zone's analytics — HTTP requests, bandwidth, cache, firewall and WAF events, threats — through Cloudflare's GraphQL Analytics API. You approve what it can touch over OAuth.
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 Cloudflare GraphQL Analytics MCP server

Cloudflare runs official remote MCP servers. The GraphQL Analytics server at https://graphql.mcp.cloudflare.com/mcp is the one that exposes traffic, cache, and firewall data. 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 OAuth prompt to authorize the account. When you authorize, grant the Analytics Read scope only — this dashboard never needs to write to Cloudflare.

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

Step 2 — Pull the numbers

Ask Claude in plain language. It uses the GraphQL Analytics server's read tools to query your zone's analytics datasets:

Claude calls Cloudflare, returns the figures, and you sanity-check them against the Cloudflare dashboard before going further. This is the moment to catch a wrong assumption — the wrong zone, a timezone offset, requests counted before vs. after caching — 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 cache hit ratio a big gauge and put it next to the request total."
• "Add a 7-day line for blocked requests under the WAF tile."
• "Format bytes as GB and round request counts to thousands."

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 cache hit ratio looks low, are we counting the API subdomain that bypasses cache?" The comment is anchored to that element, not floating in a Slack thread. Claude reads the comments through the CLI, reruns the relevant Cloudflare 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 static-asset subdomain from the cache ratio." 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 Cloudflare 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 traffic dashboard needs Analytics Read and nothing more. Scope the OAuth grant or API token accordingly.
• Check the figures before you share. The GraphQL API returns exactly what you ask for — if your request count includes a zone you didn't mean, or your cache ratio counts uncacheable responses, the dashboard will confidently show the wrong number. Reconcile against the Cloudflare 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.