An AI assistant becomes useful the day it touches your real data rather than a summary copied over by hand. Flots plugs into Claude, and into any MCP-compatible assistant, in a few minutes.
Setup takes four steps. The longest part will be deciding what you open up to the assistant.
Before you start
You need two things. A Flots account, obviously. And an assistant able to add a custom connector: that's the standard mechanism by which an assistant reaches a third-party application over MCP.
MCP is an open standard, not a proprietary integration. What you set up here works the same way with the other clients that implement it.
Step 1: copy the Flots server address
In Flots, open Settings, then the Connected applications (MCP) section.
The server address is shown with a button to copy it. Use that button rather than retyping it: an approximate address produces a connection error that's hard to diagnose afterwards.
It's also the screen you'll come back to later to see who is connected and cut off an access.
Step 2: add the connector in your assistant
Open your assistant's connector settings. In Claude, that's Settings, then Connectors.
Choose to add a custom connector, and paste the Flots server address. The assistant saves the connection and offers to authenticate you.
Step 3: authorize, and choose what you open up
A Flots window opens for you to sign in to your account. You're the one authenticating, never the assistant on your behalf: it doesn't see your password.
Then comes the choice of permissions. Think about the use you have in mind before granting everything out of reflex.
| What you want to do | What to grant |
|---|---|
| Consult, review, take stock | Read access alone is enough |
| Create tasks, plan, file things | Read and write |
| Clean up, reorganize, delete | Add deletion |
An assistant granted read access only can't write anything, whatever it's asked afterwards. The block is applied on the Flots server side.
Step 4: set note reading
This setting is deliberately kept out of the connection flow. You'll find it in Settings, under Note content reading.
- Never, the out-of-the-box setting. The assistant creates and edits notes, but never reads their text.
- Personal notes only. It reads the contents of the notes that nobody but you has written.
- All notes. It reads everything you can read, including notes shared in a project and written by someone else.
Text written by another person and read by an assistant can contain instructions aimed at that assistant. The third level is the only one that exposes you to this, which is why the default sits on "Never".
Start with read-only
Spend a week querying your projects before granting write access. You'll quickly see which actions you actually miss.
Checking that the MCP connection works
Ask a question you already know the answer to. "How many tasks do I have for tomorrow?" makes a good test: if the total is right, the assistant really is reading your data.
Follow up with a request that spans several projects, the kind of question that used to cost you several screens.
When the connection won't go through
The assistant rejects the address. Copy it again from the copy button rather than by hand, and check that no space is trailing at the start or the end.
The sign-in window opens then closes right away. A popup blocker or an expired Flots session is almost always the cause. Sign in to Flots first in the same browser, then try again.
The assistant says it can't perform an action. It's missing the matching permission. Permissions are set at connection time: revoke the access from Settings, then reconnect and grant what was missing.
An action stays pending. That's the expected behavior for anything that deletes, or anything that lands on a colleague. The assistant has to show you the exact change and wait for your approval.
Cutting off access
Go back to Settings → Connected applications (MCP). Every application is listed there with the date it was last used, and a button revokes its access on the spot.
It's the right reflex when you're testing several assistants, or when you stop using one.
To see what the connection changes concretely over a working week, read Connect Claude to Flots with the MCP server. And if you're new to the app, start with getting started with Flots instead.
Plug in your assistant, keep control of your data.
