Metabase Development Guide

Skills

For detailed guidance on writing and reviewing code and documentation, see the skills in .claude/skills/:

Clojure

clojure-mcp tools

• clojure-eval - Always use this to evaluate Clojure code, run tests, and verify edits/compile. Prefer this over shell commands.
• clojure-write - Clojure/ClojureScript development with REPL-driven workflow and coding conventions
• clojure-review - Clojure/ClojureScript code review guidelines and style enforcement

clojure-mcp-lite tools

• clj-nrepl-eval - This is another good mechanism for running Clojure code on an nrepl server.

TypeScript

• typescript-write - TypeScript/JavaScript development and best practices
• typescript-review - TypeScript/JavaScript code review guidelines

Documentation

• docs-write - Documentation writing with Metabase style guide
• docs-review - Documentation review checklist

Serialization

• serdes-workflow - Export, validate, and import Metabase content via serdes
• serdes-yaml-edit - Edit exported YAML files with correct portable references

Frontend

• analytics-events - Add product analytics events to track user interactions

Important: When working with frontend code, read frontend/CLAUDE.md for project-specific guidelines on component preferences, styling, TypeScript migration, testing requirements, and available scripts.

Running Backend Tests

If you do not have clojure-eval available to you or clj-nrepl-eval, do not fall back to clj -X:dev:test directly. Instead, use ./bin/test-agent. It produces clean, plain-text output with no progress bars or ANSI codes.

./bin/test-agent :only '[metabase.foo-test]'              # run a namespace
./bin/test-agent :only '[metabase.foo-test/some-test]'    # run a single test
./bin/test-agent :only '[metabase.foo-test metabase.bar-test]'  # multiple namespaces

Once again, do not use clj -X:dev:test directly — its progress-bar output is hard to parse.

Tool Preferences

If clojure-mcp tools are available, prefer them over shell-based alternatives for Clojure development.

Metabase

Metabase is the easy, open-source way for everyone in your company to ask questions and learn from data.

Get started

The easiest way to get started with Metabase is to sign up for a free trial of Metabase Cloud.

You get expert support, backups, upgrades, an SMTP server, SSL certificate, SoC2 Type 2 security auditing, and more (plus your money goes toward improving a major open-source project). Check out our quick overview of cloud vs self-hosting. If you need to, you can always switch to self-hosting Metabase at any time (or vice versa).

Key Features

• Set up in five minutes (we're not kidding), or have us host Metabase for you so you don't even need to think about it.
• Let anyone on your team ask questions without knowing SQL.
• Use the SQL editor for more complex queries.
• Ask AI: Metabot gives you answers you can trust, helps you write queries, and more. Or build your own AI agent to query your data.
• Build handsome, interactive dashboards with filters, auto-refresh, fullscreen, custom click behavior, and more.
• Use documents for long-form data analysis, and invite people to comment.
• Transform raw data into analytics-ready tables, track down broken dependencies, and define canonical metrics in Metabase's Data Studio.
• Set up alerts on your data, or schedule dashboard subscriptions to email, Slack, or even a webhook.
• Curate content in a Library, and version your work with Git.
• Embed Metabase in your app, with components for charts, dashboards, data browser, AI chat, and more. You can even put an entire Metabase in your app.
• Set granular permissions that work for both internal teams and embedded analytics, whether you co-locate your customer data, or give each customer their own database.
• Dark mode, content translations, and way more stuff than we can list here.

Take a tour of Metabase.

Supported databases

• Officially supported databases
• Community drivers

Installation

Metabase can be run just about anywhere. Check out our Installation Guides.

Documentation

The Metabase handbook.

Contributing

To contribute to Metabase, see our Developer docs.

Extending Metabase

Hit our API to integrate analytics. Check out our guide, Working with the Metabase API.

Internationalization

We want Metabase to be available in as many languages as possible. See which translations are available and help contribute to internationalization using our project over at Crowdin. You can also check out our policies on translations.

Security Disclosure

See SECURITY.md for details.

License

This repository contains the source code for both the Open Source edition of Metabase, released under the AGPL, as well as the commercial editions of Metabase, which are released under the Metabase Commercial Software License.

See LICENSE.txt for details.

Unless otherwise noted, all files © 2026 Metabase, Inc.

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Metabase Experts

If you’d like more technical resources to set up your data stack with Metabase, connect with a Metabase Expert.