Dbt column descriptions not accessible via MCP

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1

Hi all, wanted to raise something I discovered while testing Holistics’ AI capabilities against our dbt-integrated datasets, in case others have hit this.

We use the Holistics dbt integration to sync column descriptions from dbt to Holistics. In the Holistics UI, the column descriptions display correctly - they appear in the model editor against the relevant fields. However, when querying via the MCP server, those descriptions come back as empty strings.

Looking at the data model AML, the reason is clear: the dbt integration writes field definitions without hardcoding the description into the AML block. It looks like the description is resolved dynamically for UI display, but the raw AML that the MCP returns has description: ''.

Anyone else come across this, any solutions?

2

Hi @Ian_McLaren ,

We already include the dbt description in the MCP response, so it looks like something may have gone wrong here.

To help us investigate further, could you please share the following details?

  1. Which specific tool were you using?
  2. Which MCP environment were you using?
  3. Which dataset were you using?

If you don’t mind, could we continue troubleshooting over email at [email protected] so we can look into your specific use case more closely?