Getting Started with Affinity MCP

Get started: Getting Started with Affinity MCP

Concept — background and overview.

What this guide covers

This is a user-friendly orientation to Affinity MCP — what it is, who it’s for, and how to decide between deployment options. For setup steps specific to your AI tool, follow the per-client guides at developer.affinity.co.

What Affinity MCP does

Affinity MCP (Model Context Protocol) lets you query and update your Affinity CRM from outside Affinity — from inside AI tools like Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, Notion Custom Agents, or Gemini CLI. Once configured, you can ask things like:

• “Find all companies I first emailed in Q1 2024.”
• “Summarize the notes on Acme Corp from this quarter.”
• “Set a reminder to follow up with Jane Smith in two weeks.”

Affinity returns live, permission-filtered data from your CRM.

Looking for AI chat inside Affinity? Affinity AI Chat is the in-app conversational interface — no setup required. MCP is for connecting Affinity to AI tools outside Affinity. See Affinity AI Chat Overview if you’d rather stay inside the Affinity app.

Who Affinity MCP is for

• Investment professionals querying pipeline, relationships, and meeting history from their preferred AI assistant
• Operators and admins updating CRM fields and creating reminders without switching contexts
• Developers building agentic workflows on top of Affinity data

Plan requirements

• Affinity plan: Scale, Advanced, or Enterprise (required for API and MCP access)
• AI client plan: Varies by client (e.g., ChatGPT works on the Free plan and up; Notion requires Business or Enterprise). See the compatibility table below or each per-client guide.
• Admin setup: MCP is enabled by default for Claude, ChatGPT, and Notion; an Affinity admin can disable it per client under Settings → Affinity MCP. Some AI clients also require their own workspace admin to turn MCP on first (e.g., Notion Business/Enterprise, Claude Team/Enterprise). See per-client guide.

Choose your deployment

Hosted (recommended for most users)

Affinity runs and updates the MCP server for you. Setup is minutes.

• Server URL: https://mcp.affinity.co/mcp
• Best for: Anyone who wants the simplest path
• Authentication: OAuth (where supported) or API key

Local (for advanced users)

You run the MCP server yourself via the affinity-mcp Python package. Useful when you need to keep MCP traffic within your own infrastructure or want to extend the server.

• Installation: uvx affinity-mcp (installed and run via uv)
• Authentication: API key only (set AFFINITY_API_KEY)
• Best for: Teams with specific security or customization requirements
• See Local Setup at developer.affinity.co for the full guide.

Set up your AI tool

Follow the dev-docs guide for your AI client:

Client	Setup guide
Claude (Desktop / Web / Code)	developer.affinity.co/pages/mcp/claude
ChatGPT (Free and up)	developer.affinity.co/pages/mcp/chatgpt
Copilot (Studio / CLI / VS Code)	developer.affinity.co/pages/mcp/copilot
Notion (Custom Agents)	developer.affinity.co/pages/mcp/notion
Gemini (CLI only)	developer.affinity.co/pages/mcp/gemini
Anything else	developer.affinity.co/pages/mcp/other-clients

Each per-client page leads with a compatibility callout, plan + admin requirements, and the exact setup steps.

Client compatibility at a glance

Every client requires an Affinity Scale, Advanced, or Enterprise plan. Beyond that, support differs by surface — including a few that surprise people:

Client	AI-client requirement	Auth	Where it works
Claude	Free, Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise (Team/Enterprise: an Owner enables it)	OAuth	Desktop, Web, Claude Code
ChatGPT	Any plan, Free and up	OAuth	ChatGPT web + desktop/mobile apps — not the OpenAI API or custom GPTs
Copilot	Copilot Studio license, or a GitHub Copilot subscription (CLI / VS Code)	API key	Studio, CLI, VS Code — not github.com, copilot.com, or mobile. Microsoft 365 Copilot support is coming soon.
Notion	Business or Enterprise; a workspace Owner enables custom MCP servers	OAuth or API key	Custom Agents only — not the default Notion AI (Ask AI / Q&A / search)
Gemini	Google account with Gemini CLI	API key	Gemini CLI only — not the web, mobile, or Workspace versions
Other clients	Any client supporting a remote MCP server with a custom Authorization header	API key	Any compatible client

Test your connection

Once configured, try one of these in your AI chat to confirm it’s working:

• Find 3 companies I emailed in the last 30 days.
• Show me my upcoming meetings.
• Summarize recent activity on Acme Corp.

If Affinity data comes back, you’re set. If not, see Troubleshooting Affinity MCP or the developer troubleshooting guide.

What’s available

Browse the full tool catalog at Available tools. MCP can both read and write your CRM. High-level capabilities:

• Relationship intelligence: Find connections, surface relationship strength, identify warm-intro paths
• Pipeline: Search and summarize opportunities, pull list entries and fields, track stage progress
• Meetings & activity: Review interactions and upcoming meetings, read meeting transcripts, log calls and messages
• Notes: Create, retrieve, and search notes on people / companies / opportunities / meetings
• Create & update records: Create companies, people, opportunities, lists, and fields; update field values and records
• Reminders: Set, list, and manage follow-up reminders

Some tools depend on features being enabled for your org — note and file search require Deal Assist, and meeting tools require unified events onboarding. If a tool returns an access error, check with your Affinity admin. See Troubleshooting Affinity MCP.

Security and permissions

MCP tool calls run with the same permissions as your Affinity user. You cannot read records you don’t have CRM access to, and your AI client cannot escalate privileges through MCP — and you can restrict a connection to read-only. The MCP server is stateless — no CRM data, prompts, or AI responses are stored by Affinity. For details, see Affinity MCP: Security & data handling.