AGENTIC Power BI Development USING MCP
I just demonstrated something in the new video that changes how we think about Power BI development workflows. Using MCP (Model Context Protocol), I connected Claude AI directly to Power BI Desktop - not just for chat, but for actual development work - to run full agentic loop.
Here's what happened in my demo:
Claude explored a multi-million row Contoso model independently
Created DAX measures following best practices
Ran real performance traces (the same ones you get in DAX Studio)
Provided optimization recommendations based on formula vs storage engine usage
Handled complex analytics like Pareto analysis and rolling averages
Even generated model documentation and updated measure descriptions
The fascinating part? It made the same optimization suggestions I would make - identifying inefficient cross joins, recommending SUMMARIZECOLUMNS over complex DAX patterns.
𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗰𝗸: LLMs can still hallucinate, and I caught it "cheating" by running JavaScript calculations instead of proper DAX. But when properly constrained to use the actual model, the accuracy was impressive.
This isn't science fiction - it's available now with Claude Desktop's MCP support. We're looking at a future where AI handles routine DAX development, performance optimization, and documentation while we focus on business logic and strategic decisions.
What Power BI tasks would you want to delegate to AI first?