Setup

1. Sign in to the platform as an admin.
2. Open the profile menu (top right) and choose MCP Setup.
3. Click Generate new key, give it a name and pick a scope:
   • Read only for agents that only pull data.
   • Read & write for agents that create or change content, groups or user roles.
4. Copy the key. It is shown once; generate a new one if you lose it.

The MCP Setup page also shows these snippets with your platform's host filled in.

Claude Code

claude mcp add tribe-social \
  --transport http \
  https://<platform-host>/api/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer tribe_mk_..."

Claude Desktop

Claude Desktop talks to remote servers through mcp-remote. Add this to claude_desktop_config.json (macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tribe-social": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-remote",
        "https://<platform-host>/api/mcp",
        "--header",
        "Authorization:${MCP_API_KEY}"
      ],
      "env": { "MCP_API_KEY": "Bearer tribe_mk_..." }
    }
  }
}

Claude.ai custom connector and other URL-only clients

Some clients only accept a URL. Use the key as a query parameter:

https://<platform-host>/api/mcp?key=tribe_mk_...

In Claude go to Settings → Integrations → Add custom MCP and paste the URL. The server strips the key from the URL before logging; still, prefer the header form whenever the client supports headers.

Verifying the connection

Ask the agent to run list_content or get_engagement_report. Both are read tools, so they work with either scope. A read-only key calling a write tool receives:

This token is read-only. Ask the platform admin to generate a read & write token to perform write operations.

Revoking access

Open MCP Setup and click the trash icon next to the key. The next request with that key fails with 401. Because keys are per agent, you can revoke one integration without touching the others.

Environment variables

Variable	Default	Purpose
MCP_RATE_LIMIT_PER_MINUTE	120	Requests allowed per key per minute on /api/mcp

No other configuration is required: keys live on the User table and the server is mounted automatically.