Context layer
The context layer lets AI agents access and reason about your organization's data through the Airbyte MCP. It has two independent parts. Organization admins can turn on either part or both.
Agent access
Agent access gives your agent read-only, live access to sources and destinations through their connectors. It uses the credentials you already stored in Airbyte and doesn't need a connection or a sync. Learn about agent access.
Search
Search finds relevant records by keyword, meaning, or both in an index Airbyte builds from your connections' synced data. It helps agents find information across tickets, conversations, and notes without knowing record IDs or exact words. Learn about search.
Data access methods
| Replicated data | Agent access | Search | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Freshness | As of your latest sync. | As of the API request or destination query. | As of your latest indexed sync or backfill. |
| Needs a connection | Yes. | No. | Yes, with search enabled. |
| Good for | Historical analysis and joins in your destination. | Current records, known IDs, and SQL queries. | Finding relevant records by keyword or meaning. |
| Tool | Your destination's query tools, or execute_external_sql_query for supported destinations. | execute_external_api_query or execute_external_sql_query. | execute_external_search_query. |
How agents use the context layer
An organization admin manages agent access and search independently. After your organization enables the parts and resources it wants to make available, connect your agent to the Airbyte MCP and ask questions in plain language. Your agent picks the tools it needs. You don't need to choose an access method or name a tool.
Availability
Agent access and search are available only in Airbyte Cloud, not self-managed Airbyte Core or Enterprise. In workspaces on customer-owned Enterprise Flex data planes, you can't turn on agent access for sources or destinations, and search isn't available for connections.
IP allow list
If a source or destination restricts inbound traffic by IP address, allow the context layer IP addresses in addition to the Airbyte Cloud IP addresses.
Usage limits
The context layer is free to use. Each organization can make up to 100,000 direct reads and searches combined per month. Other Airbyte MCP tools don't count toward this limit. Direct reads also count toward the API rate limits of the source you read from. SQL queries and search backfills use destination compute, which your destination provider may charge for.