Alibaba Cloud Data Agent Skills

AI Agent Skills that let AI assistants (Claude Code, Qoder, Codex, and other agent runtimes) invoke Alibaba Cloud Apsara Data Agent for Analytics — an intelligent data analysis agent that turns natural language questions into SQL, insights, and full analysis reports on your enterprise databases and files.

Ask questions like “Which department has the highest average salary?” or “Analyze the sales trend of the last quarter and generate a report”, and the agent handles requirement analysis, data understanding, SQL execution, insight generation, and report rendering.

Two Independent Skills

This repository contains two standalone skills for the same backend service. Choose the one that fits your agent runtime — they are independent and must not be mixed on the same session.

Feature Highlights

• Data discovery — list instances, databases, and tables managed in DMS and the Data Agent Data Center
• Data import — import DMS databases/tables into the Data Center for analysis
• Natural language analysis — quick Q&A (sub-second) or deep multi-step analysis with generated reports
• File analysis — upload and analyze local CSV / XLSX / JSON / TXT files
• Session reuse — multi-turn conversations with full context preservation
• Workspaces & custom agents — team collaboration spaces and user-defined specialized agents

Prerequisites (Both Skills)

1. An Alibaba Cloud account with data sources managed in DMS (or use the built-in demo database internal_data_employees)
2. Credentials via the Alibaba Cloud default credential chain (env vars ALIBABA_CLOUD_ACCESS_KEY_ID / ALIBABA_CLOUD_ACCESS_KEY_SECRET, ~/.aliyun/config.json, or ECS instance role), or a DATA_AGENT_API_KEY from the Data Agent Console
3. RAM permission: AliyunDMSFullAccess or AliyunDMSDataAgentFullAccess (see references/RAM-POLICIES.md)

Quick Start — CLI Skill

cd alibabacloud-data-agent-skill

# 1. Set up the Python environment (Python 3.10+ required)
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r scripts/requirements.txt

# 2. Configure credentials
export ALIBABA_CLOUD_ACCESS_KEY_ID=your-ak
export ALIBABA_CLOUD_ACCESS_KEY_SECRET=your-sk
export DATA_AGENT_REGION=cn-hangzhou

# 3. Discover data and start analyzing
python3 scripts/data_agent_cli.py ls
python3 scripts/data_agent_cli.py db \
    --dms-instance-id  --dms-db-id  \
    --db-name  --tables "t1,t2" \
    -q "Which department has the highest average salary?"
# -> ✅ Async task started. Session ID: abc123xyz

# 4. Follow up on the same session
python3 scripts/data_agent_cli.py attach --session-id abc123xyz -q "Break down by month"

Full documentation: SKILL.md · references/COMMANDS.md · references/WORKFLOWS.md · references/ANALYSIS_MODE.md

Quick Start — MCP Skill

# 1. Build the server once (Go 1.23+, https://go.dev/dl/)
cd server && make build   # -> server/bin/data-agent-mcp-server

Register the server in your MCP client (stdio mode shown; Streamable HTTP is also supported):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "data-agent": {
      "command": "bash",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/data-agent-skill/alibabacloud-data-agent-mcp-skill/scripts/select-binary.sh"],
      "env": {
        "DATA_AGENT_WORKSPACE_ID": "your-workspace-id"
      }
    }
  }
}

Restart the client and verify the data-agent server is connected — then the agent can call tools like data_agent_list_workspace_databases, data_agent_create_session, data_agent_wait_result, and data_agent_result directly.

Full documentation: alibabacloud-data-agent-mcp-skill/README.md (deployment guide: stdio / Streamable HTTP / Aily multi-tenant) · alibabacloud-data-agent-mcp-skill/SKILL.md (tool reference & workflows)

Note: server binaries are not committed to this repository. Build the server once (cd server && make build) or point DATA_AGENT_SERVER_BIN at a deployed binary — scripts/select-binary.sh locates it (see the MCP skill’s INSTALLATION.md).

Repository Layout

├── alibabacloud-data-agent-skill/        # CLI skill (Python)
│   ├── SKILL.md                          # CLI skill instructions
│   ├── scripts/                          # CLI source (SDK + CLI modules + entry point)
│   ├── references/                       # CLI skill reference docs
│   ├── assets/                           # Example data (example_game_data.csv)
│   ├── sessions/                         # CLI session data (gitignored)
│   ├── tests/                            # CLI test suite
│   └── evals/                            # Eval scenarios
├── alibabacloud-data-agent-mcp-skill/    # MCP skill (launcher + docs, no server source)
│   ├── SKILL.md                          # MCP skill instructions
│   ├── README.md                         # Deployment guide (stdio / HTTP / Aily)
│   ├── scripts/select-binary.sh          # Server binary locator
│   ├── assets/                           # Static assets (+ optional assets/bin/ for binaries)
│   └── references/                       # INSTALLATION.md, ram-policies.md
└── server/                               # Go MCP Server (standalone project)
    ├── main.go / go.mod / Makefile
    ├── cmd/dacli/                        # Manual verification CLI
    └── internal/                         # Server implementation

License

Apache License 2.0 — see alibabacloud-data-agent-skill/assets/LICENSE.