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MCP Server Overview

Mention exposes a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server so external agents — Claude, IDE-integrated assistants, custom internal tools — can use your organization's curated knowledge as a backend. An MCP client connects to the server, you sign in with your Mention account through a standard OAuth flow, and the client can then list Audiences, read Articles and SOPs, and ask grounded questions — scoped to exactly the Audiences you are a member of.

This page covers what the MCP server is and how to connect to it. For the tool surface itself, see MCP Tools Reference.

What MCP is

The Model Context Protocol is an open protocol for connecting AI agents to external tools and data sources. An MCP server exposes a set of tools the agent can call and resources it can read; an MCP client (the agent) connects to the server, discovers the tools, and uses them as part of its reasoning.

Mention's MCP server is one such server. It lets agents bring your curated Glossary and Playbook content into their context — useful when you want an agent to answer questions about your team's terminology and processes the same way Mention does internally.

Why connect via MCP

The MCP server is the right surface when you want:

  • An external agent to answer questions grounded in your organization's source material without re-implementing retrieval, Article generation, or SOP generation.
  • A consistent, curated knowledge layer across multiple agents — internal chatbots, IDE assistants, voice agents — without copy-pasting your content into prompts.
  • Access that follows your own Audience memberships, so each person who connects sees exactly the knowledge domains they belong to.

If you want to embed Mention content in your own UI, or build something more bespoke than what an MCP client gives you, the same data is reachable through the underlying API. The MCP server is the lowest-effort path for the common case.

Authentication

The MCP server authenticates with OAuth 2.1 — the same standard modern MCP clients (Claude's connectors, Claude Cowork, IDE assistants) use. There is no API key to generate or paste.

When you add the server to a client, the client runs the OAuth flow for you:

  1. The client discovers Mention's authorization server automatically from the server's metadata.
  2. Your browser opens to sign in with your Mention account.
  3. You pick which organization to connect on the consent screen.
  4. The client receives an access token and stores it; it refreshes automatically.

The token represents you, so the server exposes exactly the Audiences you are a member of. To change what an MCP connection can see, an admin changes your Audience memberships in the Mention app (see Managing Audiences) — there is nothing to configure on the connection itself.

How to connect

Most MCP clients take a single server URL and handle the rest of the OAuth flow themselves. Configure your client with:

  • URL — https://mcp.mentionai.app/mcp

For example, in a Claude connector or Cowork, add a custom connector pointing at that URL. The first time you use it, you will be prompted to sign in and choose your organization; after that the connection stays authorized until you disconnect it.

Once connected, the client discovers the available tools automatically. There is no separate handshake or session step, and no token to manage by hand.

What the server exposes

The MCP server exposes five tools, in the order an agent would use them:

  1. list_audiences — discover which Audiences you have access to.
  2. read_audience — load one Audience's index: every Concept with its definition and prerequisites, every Process with its objective and the titles of every task in its SOP. Article and SOP bodies are not included — drill in with the next two tools.
  3. read_concept — load the full Article body for one Concept.
  4. read_sop — load the full SOP body (tasks, steps, callouts, knowledge checks) for one Process.
  5. ask — ask a synthesized cross-cutting question for things the Articles and SOPs didn't fully answer. Requires audience_id (from step 1) and question; never call without both.

Each tool is described in MCP Tools Reference, including when to prefer one over another.

Generation latency

Articles and SOPs are pre-generated as soon as you are added to an Audience, so they are normally ready immediately. If anything is still being generated, read_audience marks it inline and lists it under a Pending content header; read_concept and read_sop return _Still generating._ for the specific item — the client never blocks waiting for generation.

Typical generation times are about 30 seconds for an Article and 90 seconds for an SOP. Retry the relevant tool after ~30–90 seconds to pick up the fresh content.