MCP server for AI assistants
WorkBOS is also a Model Context Protocol server, so an assistant you already use, such as Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor, can read your workspace directly instead of working from a copy of it. Requests run through the same row-level security and role permissions the key’s holder has: an assistant can never read a record its key could not read, whatever it is asked to do. Included from the Pro plan upwards, at no extra charge from us.
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1. Issue a key
Administration > API keys > Assistant access. A new key is read only by default. You choose read-only or read-and-write when you create it, and can change an existing key between the two later without reissuing it.
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2. Point the client at it
Add the WorkBOS MCP endpoint to Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or any other MCP client, with the key you just issued. Nothing to install and nothing to host yourself.
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3. Ask it about your business
The assistant can now read the workspace: invoices, deals, tasks, leave, attendance, the ledger, the audit trail, across 111 kinds of business record in total. It sees exactly what the key’s holder is allowed to see and nothing else.
| Guard | What it does |
|---|---|
| The database is the wall, not the prompt | Requests run through the same row-level security and role permissions a person gets, regardless of what the assistant is asked to do. |
| Read-only by default | A new key cannot write. Turning writes on is a separate, reversible step on the same key. |
| One switch stops all writes | A workspace-wide kill switch turns off assistant writes across every connected client at once, without revoking keys or breaking reads. |
| Revoke one key without touching the others | Keys are issued and revoked individually, and stored encrypted server-side; the page shows status, never the value. |
| Per-key rate limits | A key carries its own limit, so one assistant looping on a question cannot starve the workspace it is asking about. |
| Every action is on the record | Writes land in the same audit trail as everything else, naming what caused them. |
- Writes are limited to safe, reversible fields on 18 kinds of record, and only when the key’s holder could make that change themselves.
- Money fields, deletions and approvals are not reachable over MCP at all, whatever the key’s scope.
- It is not a sync: records are read where they live, at the moment the assistant asks, and nothing is copied into the assistant and kept there by us.
- It is not on the Free plan.
This is a different door into the same workspace, not a replacement for Chief, the assistant built into WorkBOS itself. Chief has tools that go beyond reading; the MCP server is how an outside assistant reaches your data under your rules. Use either, both, or neither.