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04 Connecting Claude, ChatGPT and Other Clients

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Connecting Claude, ChatGPT and Other Clients

MDflow's remote MCP server connects to any MCP-capable tool. All of it requires Pro.

MDflow publishes per-client setup guides, which are the authoritative steps:

Two ways to authenticate

OAuth — for Claude.ai and ChatGPT. Paste the server URL, click connect, and authorize in your browser. There is no token to copy, store, or leak. This is the better path wherever it is offered.

A Personal Access Token — for clients that take a bearer credential in their configuration. Create one at mdflow.cz/settings.

The remote server

https://mdflow.cz/api/mcp

That URL is all most clients need. MDflow is also listed in the official MCP registry as cz.mdflow/mcp, so registry-aware clients can find it by name.

Supported clients

  • Claude.ai — browser OAuth, no token.
  • ChatGPT — browser OAuth, no token.
  • Claude Desktop
  • Claude Code
  • Cursor
  • Codex
  • The OpenAI Responses API
  • Any other MCP-capable client.

The local server

Prefer to run it yourself? Download the local server and run it over stdio, supplying the token through your MCP client's configuration. Same tools, on your machine.

Use it for air-gapped setups, custom wiring, or development against a local MDflow. Otherwise the remote server is less work.

If it will not connect

MDflow returns authentication setup help before a token is configured, so a client that connects without credentials gets told what to do rather than a bare error.

The two errors to distinguish:

  • 401 — the credential is invalid, expired or revoked. Re-authorize, or create a new token.
  • 403 — the account is not on Pro. The credential is fine. This is the one people misdiagnose.

Getting good results

Once connected, the quality of what an agent can do for you is mostly determined by one thing:

Write real folder descriptions.

mdflow_get_context ranks folder descriptions above folder names and document titles. An agent searching a workspace of undescribed folders is guessing from titles alone. Describe each folder that actually holds documents, in the words someone would search for, and retrieval starts working. See 02 Folders and Subfolders.

Workspace descriptions help too — an agent picks the right workspace by matching your topic against them.

Before you connect

A connected agent can read and write everything in your account — every workspace, including private ones — and change what is publicly shared. There is no narrower grant.

Two things it cannot do:

  • Read version history, which is yours alone — and is how you undo an agent's mistake.
  • Read encrypted documents, which is how you keep something away from it entirely.

Connect deliberately, and use those two facts.