OrgRelay as an MCP server
Staff who already work in Claude or Codex can reach company documents, tables and approvals without leaving their AI client. OrgRelay acts as an MCP server on the company's own machine, and every permission and log that applies in OrgRelay's app applies here too.
This section is about the direction client → OrgRelay. For OrgRelay calling your business systems, see the developer docs and the connector directory.
Two ways to use OrgRelay
| OrgRelay app (API mode) | Your AI client (MCP mode) | |
|---|---|---|
| Where people chat | OrgRelay web, Windows, Android, iPhone | Claude Code, Claude Desktop, claude.ai, Codex, Cursor |
| Model | Configured by the company, paid by usage | The person's own Claude or Codex subscription |
| Personal AI account needed | No | Yes, one per person |
| Where document snippets go | The model the company chose; can be domestic or local | Anthropic (Claude) or OpenAI (Codex) |
| Permissions, sources, exact calculations, approvals, activity log | Yes | Yes, identical |
Both can run at the same time. Who should use which is a business decision; the trade-offs are summarised for owners on orgrelay.com.
Pick your client
All four use the same endpoint, the company's OrgRelay address plus /mcp, for example https://ai.example.com/mcp. On the Mac mini itself, http://127.0.0.1:8686/mcp also works.
Tools OrgRelay exposes
| Tool | Access | What it does |
|---|---|---|
search_documents |
read | Search the document library; returns passages with file name, location and a link to the source |
read_document |
read | Read a file by page or paragraph, with sources |
list_files |
read | Folders and files I can access |
list_tables |
read | Tables from Excel and CSV files, with column names |
query_table |
read | Exact calculations with DuckDB: sums, counts, grouping, date filters. Query only |
get_alerts |
read | Business alerts such as low stock, overdue receivables, late orders |
get_tasks |
read | The goals and tasks board |
list_approvals |
read | Approval requests and outcomes. Owners see all; others see their own |
create_approval_request |
creates a request | Propose a change, a task or an announcement. Creates the request only; never executes |
list_skills, load_skill, read_skill_file |
read | Company Agent Skills granted to my department |
Connected business systems also appear, limited to what the person's role may use. A WooCommerce or Odoo connector's read tools can be called directly; its write tools go through approval exactly as described in approvals and write tools.
There is no tool that approves anything. Approvals happen only in OrgRelay, by the owner or a designated approver. That design choice is explained on human-in-the-loop for MCP.
Personal tokens
- Sign in to OrgRelay on the web, open your name at the bottom left, then MCP connections.
- Choose the client and a lifetime of 30, 90, 180 or 365 days. Click Generate personal token.
- The dialog shows the token and ready-made configuration with the company address filled in. Copy it.
- The token is shown once. Afterwards only the last four characters appear. Lost it? Revoke it and generate another.
Each person can hold up to 10 active tokens. Each token may make up to 60 calls per minute. Tokens are stored as hashes, never in logs.
claude.ai and the Claude mobile app use sign-in instead of a token; see Claude Desktop and claude.ai.
What the owner controls
Under Admin → MCP the owner can switch MCP off for everyone, see who uses it with which client, suspend a person (revoking all their tokens and sign-ins at once), revoke individual OAuth grants and read the last 100 MCP calls, with permission denials highlighted. Changes to a person's folders or account apply to MCP immediately. Patterns for running this across a company are on enterprise MCP patterns.
A recommended system prompt
OrgRelay sends this to the client on connect, in the person's language. Pasting it into a Claude project, CLAUDE.md or Codex's AGENTS.md makes answers more consistent:
You are connected to the company's OrgRelay library. When answering questions about the company:
1. Find evidence with search_documents or read_document first; do not answer from memory.
2. Cite the source after each conclusion: file name and location (page, paragraph or row).
3. Every number must come from query_table. Check table and column names with list_tables first; do not estimate.
4. If a tool says nothing was found or access is denied, say "not found within your permissions". Do not guess or rephrase to get around it.
5. Changes, tasks and announcements can only be proposed with create_approval_request. Tell the user the owner must approve it in OrgRelay.Test with two questions
- A normal question: "Using orgrelay, how are delivery time and payment terms written in our recent quotations? Cite sources." You should get quotes with file names and locations.
- An out-of-bounds question, with an ordinary employee's token: "Using orgrelay, list everyone's salary from the finance folder." The answer should be that nothing is accessible. If numbers appear, revoke the token and tell the administrator.
Reaching OrgRelay from outside the office
The MCP address uses the same Cloudflare Tunnel as the OrgRelay app. If the company protects OrgRelay with Cloudflare Access, /mcp needs a Bypass policy, because AI clients cannot complete Access's browser login. claude.ai custom connectors also need oauth and .well-known bypassed. Those paths are protected by OrgRelay's own tokens and sign-in.
Common questions
Does the company pay for models in MCP mode? No, each person's own subscription is used.
Can staff share one Claude account? No. One account and one token per person.
Where does data go? Into the client's conversation, so to Anthropic or OpenAI. Owners can switch MCP off per person.
Next
- Set up a client: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor.
- Vendor MCP servers you can put behind OrgRelay: official MCP servers.
- Want to build a connector instead? Start at the quickstart.
- Design notes on approvals: human-in-the-loop for MCP. Company rollout: enterprise MCP patterns.
- Connector developers: MCP transport explains the server side of the same protocol.
Related pages
- Connector spec: manifest fields, naming, errors, paging and versioning.
- Security requirements: tenant isolation, logs and error hygiene.
- Authentication: tokens, OAuth client credentials and rotation.
- Self-test tool: the self-test tool and what each check means.