Your First Connection (2-Minute Setup)

What is a connection?

A connection is a pre-authenticated link between your workspace and an external service. Connections come in two types: API connections (for REST APIs) and MCP server connections (for services that expose an MCP interface). Once added, all agents and automations in your workspace can use the connection.

Connection access types

Each connection has an access type that controls who in the workspace can use it:

  • Personal — only visible and usable by you
  • Workspace Wide — available to all members in the workspace
  • Specific Team Members — shared with a selected subset of members

Adding an API connection

Go to My Connections in the sidebar and click Add Connection. Select API as the connection type, enter the base URL of the service (for example, https://api.stripe.com/v1 for Stripe), and give it a name. Then add your credentials — each credential you enter gets a variable name you assign. That variable name is then used in your automation steps to reference the credential securely. The actual credential value is encrypted and never exposed to automation logic.

Authentication methods

API connections support all common authentication styles:

  • Bearer token — set the Authorization header to Bearer [your-token-variable]
  • Basic auth — set the Authorization header to Basic [your-credentials-variable]
  • Custom header — use any header name, for example X-API-Key: [your-key-variable]
  • Query parameter — append to the URL, for example ?api_key=[your-key-variable]

Adding an MCP server connection

Select MCP Server as the connection type and provide the server URL. MCP servers define their own tool schemas, so once added your agents and automations can discover and call all tools on that server by name using the use_mcp_tool step type.

Verifying a connection

The fastest way to verify a new connection works is to open a chat session and ask the agent to make a test call using it. For example: 'Test my Stripe connection by fetching the first customer.' The agent will call the API and return the result, confirming the connection and credentials are correct.