Observe launches MCP server and CLI for AI agents to query telemetry data

Observe by Snowflake is responding to a shift in how observability data is consumed: as AI agents become primary users of telemetry, platforms must expose data through machine-readable interfaces—APIs, MCP, and CLIs—not just user interfaces. The company gathered feedback from engineering teams already connecting agents to Observe and learned that the built-in LLM intermediary was both expensive and unnecessary. With modern foundation models, agents can reason directly against Observe's data structures without a middleman, a redesign that trades flexibility and customization for cost efficiency and speed. Engineers have begun building workarounds and custom solutions to fill gaps in programmatic access; the new tools address those gaps by ensuring the CLI and MCP server expose every operation available in the UI. By dropping the LLM layer and giving agents direct access to the same APIs that power the web interface—including APM service maps, OpenTelemetry data setup, and active alert listing—Observe positions observability as a data problem that can be solved by agents and humans working in parallel.