MCP Authentication
Connecting an Agent only takes a few minutes: switch on agent access for your organization, create your personal access token, and point your Agent at AbleTime's MCP endpoint.
Only an admin or owner can enable or disable agent access. Any member can create their own personal access token anytime — it starts working as soon as an administrator enables agent access.
1. Enable agent access
Open Settings → Integrations → API Keys. Above the key list you'll find the Agent access (MCP) switch, which controls whether members' personal access tokens can be used by agent integrations. Set it to Enabled.
2. Create a personal access token
Open Edit Profile > API Access and create your token. It's shown only once, so store it wherever your Agent host will use it — and if you ever need to cut off the connections, rotating the token disconnects them immediately. Personal access tokens are covered in full under Documentation → API → Authentication.
...or connect via OAuth
If your Agent lives in a browser platform — Claude.ai, ChatGPT, and other hosted connectors — you can skip steps 2 and 3 entirely. Instead of a pasted token, the platform sends you to an AbleTime consent screen; approve it, and the platform receives a credential of its own that works exactly like a personal access token. Agent access still needs to be enabled, the same as step 1.
3. Point your host at MCP
Give your Agent host (Cursor, Claude Code, or any app that takes a server URL) your AbleTime site address followed by:
POST /api/public/v2/mcp
Project management tools live at a second endpoint, currently in beta. Add it as a separate server entry — the same token authenticates both:
POST /api/public/v2/mcp/pm
AbleTime MCP takes a single JSON-RPC POST and returns one JSON response. Authenticate with:
Authorization: Bearer <your personal access token>
MCP takes personal access tokens only — an organization API key cannot connect. The token carries your identity and your role, and no grants at all: what the Agent may do is decided by who you are and which projects you belong to, exactly as it would be in the application.
4. Call orientation first
When the host connects, AbleTime tells the Agent to call orientation before anything else. Orientation is how the Agent learns who it's acting as — your open drafts, recent time, active tasks and projects, and the rules for recording work here.
An Agent that skips orientation is missing the recording rules and the ids of your open drafts.
Next
From here, the Agent records drafts as well as creating and updating tasks. For a step-by-step first session, see Guides → Working with the API → Connecting your agent. Every tool is on Tools, and preferences the Agent keeps across sessions are on Customizing.
Endpoint shapes, status codes, and request fields are in the API Reference.