MCP

MCP (Model Context Protocol) lets an AI assistant such as Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor use your organization's knowledge as tools. The assistant can search your sources, get cited answers from an agent, and save drafts for review.

Enable an agent for MCP

An MCP client answers through an agent, so at least one agent must allow it:

As an admin, open the user menu, then Agents. Open the agent.
On the Channels step, turn on MCP server ("For AI clients & other agents").
The step shows the agent's permanent handle with a Copy button. Clients use this handle to pick the agent.
Set the agent live.

If no agent is enabled, searches and answers fail with a message asking an admin to enable one, and list_agents comes back empty.

The setup screen

Open Settings, then MCP under Connections & data. Every member can see it. The screen shows:

MCP server: the server URL, which ends in /api/mcp, with a copy button. It is a remote server using streamable HTTP.
Set it up with your agent: one prompt you paste into your assistant. It contains the URL and tells the assistant to use OAuth where supported, or an API key otherwise.
Add it manually: one tab per client with the exact config. Claude (on claude.ai, Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, paste the URL; for Claude Desktop, a config file snippet), Claude Code (a claude mcp add command), Cursor (a config snippet and an Add to Cursor button), ChatGPT (Settings → Connectors → Create, choose MCP server; needs a ChatGPT plan with connectors or developer mode enabled), HubSpot Breeze, VS Code, and Other.
Tools the server exposes: the list below, each tagged read-only or writes.

Signing in: OAuth or an API key

Clients that support OAuth (Claude and ChatGPT do) sign in with no key. The browser opens a consent page titled Connect {client} listing what the client may do: Search and read your knowledge, Answer questions from your knowledge, Save new knowledge, and Stay connected. If you belong to more than one organization, pick one under Grant access to. Then click Authorize. The client only reaches knowledge in that one organization.

Clients that cannot do OAuth send an API key as Authorization: Bearer sk-live-…. Create one under Settings → Keys & Secrets → Create key. A personal key acts as you; an organization key acts for the organization. See Authentication, keys and scopes.

Scopes

Three scopes control what a connection may do:

retrieve: search and read passages.
answer: get written answers from an agent.
ingest: save drafts to your knowledge.

OAuth connections also request offline_access to stay signed in. A client only sees the tools its scopes allow; a blocked call returns "This connection is missing the '{scope}' scope."

The tools

Tool	Needs	What it does
`search`	retrieve	Ranked short passages with citations, no written answer.
`retrieve`	retrieve	Ranked sources with relevance scores and where each came from.
`fetch`	retrieve	The full text of one search result.
`answer`	answer	A written, cited answer from an agent. Options include the agent handle, effort, answer mode, council, and prior messages for context.
`ingest`	ingest	Saves a draft to your knowledge for human review. It is never published live.
`list_agents`	retrieve or answer	Lists the agents enabled for MCP with their handles.

Effort levels pull more sources as they rise: fast, balanced, thorough, research. The default, auto, lets Records Labs pick.

Per-agent answering

If the client passes an agent handle, the answer comes only from that agent's knowledge scope, persona and rules.
If it passes none, the organization's default agent answers when it is MCP-enabled; otherwise the oldest enabled agent does. Search covers all MCP-enabled agents' knowledge combined.
An agent set to answer through a council runs the council for MCP calls too. See Council answers.

ingest needs a personal key or OAuth sign-in (an organization key is refused) and the contributor role or higher. Titles are capped at 200 characters and content at 50,000.

Limits and billing

Requests are rate limited per key and per organization, per minute. See Rate limits, errors and the stability policy.
MCP needs the Programmatic access plan feature, which is included in every plan.
Answers and searches over MCP use credits like any other channel. See Credits and the rate card.

Prefer REST? The same capabilities are available as endpoints; start with Getting started with the Records Labs API.

MCP