Snowflake

The Snowflake auth provider lets tools and agents query Snowflake on behalf of a user. Each end user signs in to Snowflake themselves, and every query runs as that user, with their own Snowflake role. There is no shared login, no stored password, and no role set in configuration.

What’s documented here

This is the setup guide for Snowflake auth. It covers creating the OAuth security integration in Snowflake, registering it in Arcade, and giving each person a role. Work through it in order.

The Arcade Snowflake toolkit is already published, so there is nothing to build or deploy. It needs this provider and one secret. What its tools do, and what they return, is documented on that page.

Once the provider exists, you can also use it from:

• An agentic client (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, or your own agent) connected to an Arcade MCP gateway
• Your custom tools that query Snowflake

Create a Snowflake security integration

These are account-level changes. Run them as ACCOUNTADMIN, or as a role granted CREATE INTEGRATION ON ACCOUNT. Owning a database is not enough, and neither is SYSADMIN, so get whoever holds that role involved before you start.

Snowflake requires a redirect URI when the integration is created, but you need this integration’s client ID and secret before you can configure the provider in Arcade. Create the integration with a placeholder, then replace it with the redirect URI Arcade shows you in a later step.

USE ROLE ACCOUNTADMIN;
 
CREATE SECURITY INTEGRATION arcade_snowflake_oauth
  TYPE = OAUTH
  ENABLED = TRUE
  OAUTH_CLIENT = CUSTOM
  OAUTH_CLIENT_TYPE = 'CONFIDENTIAL'
  OAUTH_REDIRECT_URI = 'https://example.com/placeholder'
  OAUTH_ISSUE_REFRESH_TOKENS = TRUE
  OAUTH_REFRESH_TOKEN_VALIDITY = 7776000
  BLOCKED_ROLES_LIST = ('ACCOUNTADMIN', 'SECURITYADMIN')
  COMMENT = 'Per-user OAuth for the Arcade Snowflake toolkit';

Three of these settings matter:

• OAUTH_ISSUE_REFRESH_TOKENS = TRUE is required. Without it, access tokens expire after roughly ten minutes and every tool call afterwards fails until the user authorizes again.
• No session:role: scope is asked for anywhere in this setup. That is what makes Snowflake fall back to each user’s own DEFAULT_ROLE, which is what gives every person their own access.
• BLOCKED_ROLES_LIST stops a sign-in from landing on the roles you name, whatever a user’s default role is set to. Snowflake already blocks ACCOUNTADMIN, ORGADMIN, GLOBALORGADMIN, and SECURITYADMIN by default. Add any other privileged role you do not want an agent session running as, such as SYSADMIN and USERADMIN.

Then read the client credentials:

SELECT SYSTEM$SHOW_OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRETS('ARCADE_SNOWFLAKE_OAUTH');

Type the integration name in uppercase. Snowflake stores it that way, and the function matches the stored name, not what you typed when you created it. The result is JSON holding OAUTH_CLIENT_ID and OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET.

Get your account subdomain

Both OAuth endpoints and the toolkit’s one secret come from your account subdomain, the part of your Snowflake account URL before .snowflakecomputing.com:

https://<account-subdomain>.snowflakecomputing.com

It looks like either myorg-myaccount or the older style xy12345.us-east-1.

Configuring Snowflake auth

USE ROLE ACCOUNTADMIN;
 
ALTER SECURITY INTEGRATION arcade_snowflake_oauth
  SET OAUTH_REDIRECT_URI = '<the redirect URI Arcade generated>';

Set the account subdomain secret

The toolkit needs to know which account to connect to. Set the SNOWFLAKE_ACCOUNT_SUBDOMAIN secret in the Arcade Dashboard:

• Click the Secrets section in the Arcade Dashboard left-side menu.
• Click the Add Secret button.
• Enter SNOWFLAKE_ACCOUNT_SUBDOMAIN as the secret ID.
• Enter your account subdomain as the secret value.
• Click the Create button.

This is an address, not a password. Pasting the whole account URL works too: the toolkit trims off https://, anything after the host, and the .snowflakecomputing.com ending before it connects.

Give each user a role

Each user’s DEFAULT_ROLE is the role their sessions start in. Grant the role and set it as the default:

USE ROLE SECURITYADMIN;
GRANT ROLE analytics_read_only TO USER analyst_jane;
 
USE ROLE USERADMIN;
ALTER USER analyst_jane SET
  DEFAULT_ROLE      = analytics_read_only
  DEFAULT_WAREHOUSE = analytics_wh;

DEFAULT_WAREHOUSE is optional. Setting it saves a step. Without it, the agent lists the warehouses the role can use and names one itself.

Check what a person can reach

To confirm what a given user will get before they authorize:

-- The default role and warehouse their sessions will use
DESC USER analyst_jane;
 
-- Every role granted to them
SHOW GRANTS TO USER analyst_jane;
 
-- What one of those roles can read
SHOW GRANTS TO ROLE analytics_read_only;

After they authorize, Snowflake.WhoAmI reports the user, role, account, and warehouse the agent is actually running as, which is the fastest way to confirm the session matches what you configured.

Secondary roles stay on, at Snowflake’s account default. A session can read anything any of that user’s granted roles can read, not just the default one. Check the full list with SHOW GRANTS TO USER.

Use Snowflake from an agentic client

Create your own Snowflake-authorized tools

Tools that query Snowflake are built like any other Arcade tool, so follow the Add user authorization to your tools and Build an MCP server guides.

The only Snowflake-specific part is the auth requirement on each tool, plus reading the account subdomain from context:

from arcade_mcp_server import Context, tool
from arcade_mcp_server.auth import OAuth2
 
@tool(
    requires_auth=OAuth2(id="snowflake", scopes=["refresh_token"]),
    requires_secrets=["SNOWFLAKE_ACCOUNT_SUBDOMAIN"],
)
async def count_rows(context: Context, table: str) -> int:
    """Count the rows in a table, as the calling user."""
    account = context.get_secret("SNOWFLAKE_ACCOUNT_SUBDOMAIN")
    token = context.get_auth_token_or_empty()
    ...

Pass the token to snowflake.connector.connect() with authenticator="oauth", and do not pass a role. Leaving the role out is what lets Snowflake fall back to each person’s own default role.