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General

Yes. The server has tools that create, update, and delete resources, and a call runs as soon as your client sends it. The agent can do whatever your Arize role allows. See safety and permissions for how to limit this.
No. The server forwards your credential to the REST API on every call, so the agent sees only what your Arize role allows.
Use OAuth for interactive clients where you sign in as yourself, such as Claude or Codex. Use an API key for scripts, CI, headless agents, and Cursor. See authentication.
There are three ways to put Arize AX in front of an agent:
  • The MCP server suits interactive use, where you work with an agent in your editor or a chat client and want it to look things up or make changes as you talk. There is no installation step, and it also works as a connector in clients that support them.
  • Skills suit repeatable workflows that you want an agent to follow, such as adding tracing to an app, building a dataset, running an experiment, or optimizing a prompt. Skills drive the CLI.
  • The Arize AX CLI suits scripts and CI/CD pipelines, where no agent needs to choose the next step.

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Connecting and troubleshooting

For setup steps, see connect your client.
Confirm the transport is Streamable HTTP. A client configured for stdio will try to run the URL as a command, and one configured for sse will hang on a connection the server does not offer. Set "type": "http", or pass --transport http on the Inspector CLI.
The header must be Authorization: Bearer <your-arize-api-key>. The Bearer prefix is mandatory, and a bare key with no prefix returns 401.If the value looks right, your client probably did not expand ${ARIZE_API_KEY}. Paste the key directly to confirm, then move it back into an environment variable once the connection works.
Arize API keys start with ak-. The server validates any other bearer token as an OAuth access token, so a key without the prefix is rejected with 401. Copy a key from Settings → API Keys and check that nothing was trimmed.
The REST API returns 404 when the caller has no read access, rather than 403, so that nobody can enumerate resources by probing IDs. A 404 on something you can see in the UI usually means the key lacks read access to that space or project, or belongs to a different region. See authorization.
Rate limits apply per user, so all of your keys share one limit. They are counted per endpoint in a fixed one-minute window. The default is 100 requests per minute. POST /v2/spans, DELETE /v2/spans, and the annotate endpoints allow 10 per minute. The response includes a Retry-After header: wait that long before retrying, and narrow your filters so fewer pages are needed. See conventions and the REST rate limits.
The server waits up to 30 seconds for the upstream REST API on each request. Narrow your filters or request a smaller page, then retry.
The server rejects requests that carry an Origin header, which means browser clients are blocked by default, including the Inspector web UI. Use the Inspector CLI described in verify the connection, or a client that runs as a native process.
Only the /mcp prefix is routed publicly, and a bare GET or HEAD against it returns a protocol error rather than a health signal. To check reachability, make a tools/list call.