# Connect AI

> Use your Orcabase data from Claude and ChatGPT over MCP: what your assistant can do, what it can’t, and how it compares with the Data Agent.

Source: https://tini.so/docs/connect-ai

Already work in Claude or ChatGPT? Connect Orcabase, and your assistant can look up your data, run queries, use your certified metrics and build charts and dashboards in Orcabase, right from the conversation you’re already in.

## How it works

AI assistants reach other apps through **MCP** (Model Context Protocol), an open standard for giving an assistant tools. Orcabase runs an MCP server at:

`https://api.tini.so/api/mcp`

Your assistant connects with an [API token](https://tini.so/docs/workspace/api-tokens) that belongs to one organization. The token decides whose data the assistant can see, so it can only ever reach that one organization, whatever it asks for.

## What your assistant can do

- **Find its way around:** list your data sources, schemas and tables, read a table’s columns, and preview sample rows.
- **Answer questions:** run SQL, re-run saved queries, and compute certified metrics by name, getting back the SQL that ran so answers can be checked.
- **Build things:** save queries with charts, create dashboards and pin charts to them, create notebooks, and draft data models and metrics.

The full list is in the [tools reference](https://tini.so/docs/connect-ai/tools). Things it saves show up in Orcabase like anything else, with the token’s name as their creator.

## What it can’t do

- Edit or delete anything that already exists: queries, dashboards, models or metrics.
- Certify metrics. The metrics it creates are drafts, until a person certifies them in Orcabase.
- Add or change data sources, or upload data. Connections are set up by people, in Orcabase, because they involve passwords.
- Reach another organization, or anything in Orcabase’s settings.

> **Note**
>
> The SQL your assistant runs uses each data source’s own login, the same as SQL you run in Orcabase. Connect your databases with read-only users and nothing it runs can change your data. See [Security](https://tini.so/docs/security).

## The built-in agent or your assistant?

|   | Data Agent in Orcabase | Claude or ChatGPT |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Where you ask | Inside Orcabase, next to your dashboards | In the assistant you already use |
| Answers | Insight, a chart you can change, and the steps | In the assistant’s own style |
| AI costs | Orcabase AI credit, or your own gateway key | Your Claude or ChatGPT plan |
| Conversations | Saved in Orcabase | Saved in the assistant |
| Tools and guardrails | The same tools | The same tools, plus notebooks |

Many teams use both: the agent for everyone in Orcabase, and Claude for whoever lives in it.

## Set it up

- [Set up Claude and ChatGPT](https://tini.so/docs/connect-ai/setup): A token, then one step in your assistant.
- [Tools reference](https://tini.so/docs/connect-ai/tools): Every tool, and what it does.

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All docs: https://tini.so/llms.txt