Airtable

The Airtable auth provider enables tools and agents to call Airtable APIs  on behalf of a user using OAuth 2.0 authentication.

What’s documented here

This page describes how to use and configure Airtable auth with Arcade.

This auth provider is used by:

• The Arcade Airtable MCP Server, which provides pre-built tools for interacting with Airtable
• Your app code that needs to call the Airtable API
• Or, your custom tools that need to call the Airtable API

Configuring Airtable auth

In a production environment, you will most likely want to use your own Airtable app credentials. This way, your users will see your application’s name requesting permission.

Before showing how to configure your Airtable app credentials, let’s go through the steps to create an Airtable app.

Create an Airtable app

To integrate with Airtable’s API, you’ll need to create an OAuth integration:

For detailed instructions, refer to Airtable’s OAuth documentation .

Next, add the Airtable app to Arcade.

Configuring your own Airtable Auth Provider in Arcade

export AIRTABLE_CLIENT_ID="<your client ID>"
export AIRTABLE_CLIENT_SECRET="<your client secret>"

AIRTABLE_CLIENT_ID="<your client ID>"
AIRTABLE_CLIENT_SECRET="<your client secret>"

auth:
  providers:
    - id: arcade-airtable
      description: Airtable OAuth 2.0 provider
      enabled: true
      type: oauth2
      client_id: ${env:AIRTABLE_CLIENT_ID}
      client_secret: ${env:AIRTABLE_CLIENT_SECRET}
      oauth2:
        scope_delimiter: " "
        pkce:
          enabled: true
          code_challenge_method: S256
        authorize_request:
          endpoint: "https://airtable.com/oauth2/v1/authorize"
          params:
            response_type: code
            client_id: "{{client_id}}"
            redirect_uri: "{{redirect_uri}}"
            scope: "{{scopes}}"
            state: "{{state}}"
        token_request:
          endpoint: "https://airtable.com/oauth2/v1/token"
          params:
            grant_type: authorization_code
            client_id: "{{client_id}}"
            redirect_uri: "{{redirect_uri}}"
          response_content_type: application/json

When you use tools that require Airtable auth using your Arcade account credentials, Arcade will automatically use this Airtable OAuth provider. If you have multiple Airtable providers, see using multiple auth providers of the same type for more information.

Using Airtable auth in app code

Use the Airtable auth provider in your own agents and AI apps to get a user token for the Airtable API. See authorizing agents with Arcade to understand how this works.

Use client.auth.start() to get a user token for the Airtable API:

from arcadepy import Arcade
 
client = Arcade()  # Automatically finds the `ARCADE_API_KEY` env variable
 
user_id = "{arcade_user_id}"
 
# Start the authorization process
auth_response = client.auth.start(
    user_id=user_id,
    provider="arcade-airtable",
    scopes=["data.records:read", "data.records:write", "schema.bases:read"]
)
 
if auth_response.status != "completed":
    print("Please complete the authorization challenge in your browser:")
    print(auth_response.url)
 
# Wait for the authorization to complete
auth_response = client.auth.wait_for_completion(auth_response)
 
token = auth_response.context.token
# Do something interesting with the token...

import { Arcade } from "@arcadeai/arcadejs";
 
const client = new Arcade();
 
const userId = "{arcade_user_id}";
 
// Start the authorization process
const authResponse = await client.auth.start(
  userId,
  "arcade-airtable",
  ["data.records:read", "data.records:write", "schema.bases:read"]
);
 
if (authResponse.status !== "completed") {
  console.log("Please complete the authorization challenge in your browser:");
  console.log(authResponse.url);
}
 
// Wait for the authorization to complete
authResponse = await client.auth.waitForCompletion(authResponse);
 
const token = authResponse.context.token;
// Do something interesting with the token...

Using Airtable auth in custom tools

You can use the pre-built Arcade Airtable MCP Server to quickly build agents and AI apps that interact with Airtable.

If the pre-built tools in the Airtable MCP Server don’t meet your needs, you can author your own custom tools that interact with the Airtable API.

Use the OAuth2() auth class to specify that a tool requires authorization with Airtable. The context.authorization.token field will be automatically populated with the user’s Airtable token:

from typing import Annotated
 
import httpx
from arcade_tdk import ToolContext, tool
from arcade_tdk.auth import OAuth2
 
 
@tool(
    requires_auth=OAuth2(
        provider_id="arcade-airtable",
        scopes=["data.records:read", "schema.bases:read"]
    )
)
async def list_bases(
    context: ToolContext,
) -> Annotated[dict, "The user's bases."]:
    """
    Retrieve the list of bases accessible to the authenticated user.
    """
    url = "https://api.airtable.com/v0/meta/bases"
    headers = {
        "Authorization": context.authorization.token,
    }
 
    async with httpx.AsyncClient() as client:
        response = await client.get(url, headers=headers)
        response.raise_for_status()
        return dict(response.json())

Available Scopes

Airtable supports various OAuth scopes that determine the level of access your application has:

• data.records:read - Read records from tables
• data.records:write - Create, update, and delete records
• data.recordComments:read - Read comments on records
• data.recordComments:write - Create and update comments on records
• schema.bases:read - Read base schema information
• schema.bases:write - Modify base schema
• webhook:manage - Create and manage webhooks
• user.email:read - Read user email address

For a complete list of available scopes, refer to the Airtable Scopes documentation .