AI assistants (MCP)
Connect an AI assistant such as Claude to your publication, choose exactly what it may see and do, and cut it off whenever you want.
What this is
You can connect an AI assistant to Inkwave and ask it about your publication in plain language: which posts brought in the most subscribers, how your latest send did, which readers have gone quiet. If you allow it, it can also do work for you, like drafting a post or building a survey.
Inkwave uses MCP, a standard way for assistants to connect to other services. There are two ways to connect:
- Signing in: you add Inkwave's address in your assistant, sign in to Inkwave, and approve what it may do. Anyone on your team can do this for themselves.
- A key: the owner or an admin creates a key in Inkwave and pastes it into the assistant's settings. This suits coding tools like Claude Code, Cursor and VS Code.
There are two pages:
| Page | Who uses it | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Connected Assistants | Everyone, for their own connections | Your account menu, Connected Assistants |
| MCP | Owner and admins, for the whole publication | Settings, MCP |
Choosing what an assistant may do
Whether you sign in or create a key, you pick from the same list of permissions. Only the first four are ticked to start with:
| Permission | What it allows |
|---|---|
| Connection enabled | Required. Grants nothing on its own. |
| Audience overview | List size, growth, engagement and deliverability. No individual readers. |
| Subscriber list | Individual subscribers: names, status, plan and join date. Not email addresses. |
| Post performance | Opens, clicks, bounces and web views for posts you have published. |
| Subscriber email addresses | Adds email addresses. They leave Inkwave and may be kept in the assistant's logs. |
| Revenue and paid subscribers | Earnings, churn, refunds, pricing tiers and who is on each. Only owners and admins can grant it. |
| Notifications | Your own notifications for this publication. |
| Organise your posts | Create tags and guest authors and put them on posts. |
| Write draft posts | Write new drafts. It can't publish, schedule, or change a post you are working on. |
| Organise your audience | Create and edit subscriber tags, custom fields and segments. |
| Build forms and surveys | Build polls, surveys and signup forms. It can't publish them or see answers. |
| Build automations | Build automation flows. It can't switch one on. |
| Manage recommendations | Change the publications you recommend. These are public. |
| Change notification settings | Turn your own notifications on and off. |
| View your website | See your website, including pages you haven't published yet. |
| Build your website | Edit pages, navbar and footer as a draft. Colour and font changes and page deletions apply to your live site at once. |
| Publish your website | Put your website's draft live. |
| Read comments on your posts | Read comments, including ones waiting for approval. |
| Moderate comments | Approve, hide and restore comments. Live immediately. |
| Change comment settings | Change how comments work across your whole site. |
| Ban and unban commenters | Stop a reader from commenting. |
| Delete comments permanently | Delete comments. Can't be undone. |
| Delete | Delete drafts, tags, guest authors, segments, signup forms and switched-off automations. Can't be undone. |
| Send and publish | Publish posts to your subscribers and switch automations on and off. A published post is emailed immediately and can't be recalled. |
Read each description on the screen before you tick it. Some permissions need another one: for example, building or publishing your website needs View your website, and every comment permission needs Read comments on your posts. Those boxes are ticked for you and show "Required by another permission you selected."
Leave Send and publish, Delete and Subscriber email addresses off unless you really want an assistant doing that.
Connecting by signing in
This works with assistants that support adding a connector by address, such as Claude.
- Open your account menu and choose Connected Assistants.
- Under Connect an assistant, click Copy address:
- All your publications: connect once, and choose which publications and what it may do in each when you approve.
- Or the address for one publication only.
- In your assistant, add the address as a connector.
- You are sent to Inkwave to sign in. Approve the access you are comfortable with. Nothing is shared until you do.
What a signed-in assistant can do is always capped by your role. If your role in a publication changes, the connection narrows with it. A contributor's assistant can never do more than a contributor.
Connecting with a key
On Settings, MCP:
- Under Connecting an assistant, copy the Server URL. Each publication has its own.
- Under Configuration, pick your assistant: Claude Code, Codex CLI, Cursor, VS Code or OpenCode. Copy the snippet into the file it names.
- Under Your keys, click Create Key. Name it after the assistant or computer that will use it, such as "Claude on my laptop", and tick what it may access. Click Create key.
- Copy your key now. It is shown only once. Inkwave keeps only a scrambled copy, so it can't be shown again. Use Copy key, or Copy the Claude Code config, key included.
- Replace
YOUR_KEY_HEREin the snippet with your key. - Tick I've saved this key somewhere safe and click Done.
Give each assistant its own key, so revoking one doesn't cut off the others. Claude's desktop and web apps have nowhere to paste a key, so connect those by signing in instead.
Your connections
On Connected Assistants
Your connections lists your own assistants, grouped by assistant, with the publications each one reaches, what it may do, and when it was last used.
- Disconnect cuts that assistant off from all its publications at once.
- Remove next to a publication cuts it off from that publication only. It only appears when the assistant reaches more than one publication. With just one, use Disconnect.
Either way it loses access immediately. Anything it already did stays as it is. To use it again, connect it from the assistant's side and approve it afresh.
You may see "Limited by your current role" when your role allows less than the connection was approved for, or "No access with your current role" when it allows nothing. An assistant not used in over 30 days is flagged, since it may have been removed on the assistant's side.
On the MCP settings page
Owners and admins see two lists for the publication:
- Your connectors: every assistant anyone on the team has connected by signing in, with who connected it. Choose Disconnect to cut one off. It stays on the list, marked Disconnected.
- Your keys: every key, with what it can access, when it was created and last used, and whether it is Active or Revoked. Choose Revoke to cut a key off straight away. A revoked key can't be brought back and stays on the list.
On either list, choose Manage permissions to change what a key or connection may do. Changes apply to its next request, and nothing needs re-pasting or re-approving. A connection still can't go beyond the role of the person who connected it.
Plans and limits
Connecting assistants needs a plan that includes API access. If yours doesn't, Create Key is switched off, and existing keys and connected assistants are paused. They are kept, and work again after you upgrade under Settings, Billing & Plan.
Your plan may also limit how many changes assistants can make each day. If so, the Your keys section shows it as "Assistant writes: up to" a number "a day for this publication". Only changes count towards it, not reading.
Troubleshooting
I lost my key: it can't be shown again. Revoke it and create a new one, then update your assistant.
The assistant says it isn't allowed to do something: check its permissions with Manage permissions, or approve it again from the assistant's side. For a signed-in assistant, your role may not allow it.
I can't open Settings, MCP: only owners and admins can. Use Connected Assistants in your account menu to connect your own assistant.
My connection shows "No access with your current role": your role changed or your seat ended. Disconnect it, or ask an admin about your role.
Someone connected an assistant I didn't set up: team members can connect their own assistants, limited to their role. You can see and disconnect them under Your connectors.
Reference
For developers: connecting and authenticating, every tool an assistant can call, and what each permission allows.