Connect an AI tool to Help Center authoring

The local Protodesk MCP adapter lets an AI tool read Help Center content and submit proposals for human review. It is a local executable using standard input/output, not a hosted browser authorization flow.

You need an Owner or Admin to prepare the Help Center API key, a compatible MCP client, the installed adapter, and your deployment's API origin. The client must be allowed to access the draft and published Help Center content it reads.

Prepare a limited API key

In Help Center → Create with AI → Connect, use Create key, or open Settings → API.

Choose Help Center Read articles (help:read) and Submit proposals (help:drafts:write). Proposal submission also requires read access. A Help Center key requires the external-sharing acknowledgment and an expiry of 1–90 days. Use the shortest practical duration and leave unrelated permissions off.

Store the key securely when it is shown. Do not paste it into an AI prompt, commit it to your repository, or include it in screenshots. See Create and manage API keys.

Install or locate the adapter

Ask your administrator for the Protodesk authoring adapter and API origin. If you have access to the backend source and a working Go installation, the setup page documents this build command, run from the backend repository:

go build -o bin/protodesk-authoring-mcp ./cmd/authoring-mcp

Use the full absolute path to the resulting executable as Adapter path, not the build command or a directory.

Configure the client

1. Open Help Center → Create with AI → Connect.
2. Select your AI tool.
3. Enter the Adapter path.
4. Enter API origin: the HTTPS origin of your Protodesk backend, without a path, query, or fragment. It is not the public Help Center URL. HTTP is allowed only for localhost development.
5. Apply the generated instructions to that client, preserving any other MCP servers already configured.
6. Supply the key through the client's indicated secret or environment mechanism, then restart the client if needed.

The adapter uses PROTODESK_API_ORIGIN and PROTODESK_AUTHORING_KEY. Local HTTP development additionally requires PROTODESK_ALLOW_LOCAL_HTTP=true. A key present in an unrelated terminal or the backend's environment is not necessarily available to the AI client process. Never put the key in a URL.

Verify the workspace before authoring

Select Copy connection check and run the copied request in your AI tool. It calls authoring_context to check the workspace and whether new proposals are allowed. This check does not submit an article.

Stop if the workspace is not the intended one. A valid connection should report the expected workspace before you give it an authoring task.

Understand the access boundary

With the appropriate scopes, the adapter can list and read articles, read its proposal results, submit updates against an article revision, and propose new article sets when that capability is available. It cannot approve, publish, or delete articles through these authoring tools.

Human approval of a new article set creates drafts. Approval of an update to an already published article changes its live content. Keep those separate when reviewing proposals.

Troubleshoot connection and submission errors

• Executable not found: check the absolute path and that the file is runnable.
• Authentication or permission error: check key expiry, revocation, required scopes, and whether the client receives the key.
• Invalid origin or connection failure: check the backend address and remove any URL path; confirm the service is reachable.
• Wrong workspace: stop and obtain the correct workspace configuration instead of submitting content.
• Revision conflict: reread the current article and review the differences before proposing another update. Do not overwrite a newer human edit.
• Submission timed out: check whether the proposal already exists before retrying. API clients should reuse the same idempotency key only with the identical payload.

When reporting an error, include the tool name and non-secret error details, never the API key or authorization header.