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Overview of HelpDocs MCP

HelpDocs MCP lets AI assistants search, read & draft articles in your Knowledge Base. Connect via URL, authorize, then ask your assistant to apply actions to your docs 🚀

River Sloane
Updated by River Sloane
3 min read
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The HelpDocs MCP (Model Context Protocol) server lets AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT connect directly to your Knowledge Base. Once connected, your assistant can search, read, and even draft articles for you, without leaving the comfort of your AI assistant's interface.

This feature is available on certain plans.

MCP Capabilities

After connecting, your AI assistant will be able to:

  • Search your articles and categories
  • Read the full content of any article
  • Create, update, archive, and delete articles and categories (including drafts and working copies)
  • Add images to articles (not available in ChatGPT)
  • Manage your help center's redirects
  • Pull analytics, if your plan includes them

Your assistant can only do what your role and permission groups in HelpDocs allow, so someone who can't publish or change settings won't see those actions, and it can only reach the articles you can.

MCP is an open standard, so the same setup works across any MCP-compatible client.

Connecting to MCP

First, enable MCP in HelpDocs:

  1. Head to Settings > AI
  2. Under For AI apps, turn on MCP access
  3. Hit Save changes
MCP access is included on some plans. If the card says Not on your plan, you'll need to upgrade first. Anyone who manages billing will see an Upgrade link on the card.

Once it's on, the same section shows your MCP server URL and quick setup steps for Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code, Cursor, and VS Code. For a full walkthrough, see Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, or VS Code.

The exact steps vary depending on which AI client you're using, but the setup process is similar across platforms. You'll need to provide your client with a name:

HelpDocs

and an MCP URL:

https://••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Once added, we'll walk you through the steps to Authorize MCP usage.

If you have multiple HelpDocs accounts, you'll be able to choose which one to connect your MCP with through the authorization flow 🏄‍♂️

Connecting Without a Browser

The authorization flow above needs someone to click Authorize in a browser. If your client runs headless—a CI pipeline, a scheduled script, a self-hosted agent—there's nobody there to do that.

In that case you can authenticate with an API key instead, using a key you create in Settings > API.

Confirming It Works

Once connected, ask your assistant something like "Search my HelpDocs articles for billing". If it returns a list of your articles, you're all set ✅

Not seeing any results? Try this 👇
  • Check MCP access is still on in Settings > AI, and that the URL matches the MCP server URL shown there
  • If you connected with an API key, check the key still exists in Settings > API
  • Make sure the host and path were entered exactly, with no trailing spaces
  • Reconnect the client to refresh the authorization

That's it! Your AI assistant is now wired straight into your Knowledge Base 🚀

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