Working with an AI assistant (MCP)

Working with an AI assistant (MCP)

The Traceable MCP connector lets an AI assistant (Claude on claude.ai, Claude Desktop, or Claude Code) work inside your account the way you do: browse projects, read documents, draft and edit content, build ID grids, create trace links, and search the Reference Library.

Two things govern everything else:

1. It acts as you. It signs in with your account through a consent screen and can reach exactly what you can reach. Not a member of a project? Neither is the assistant. Read-only role? The assistant is read-only too.
2. It only touches drafts. Publishing, review, and e-signature stay human actions in the app. Every change is written to the audit log against your name, and each edited row waits for you in the document's Agent panel.

Before you connect

MCP access is off by default. An org admin turns it on for you in Organisation → Members, in the AI / integrations access box. That switch is also the instant cut-off: turning it off disconnects the connector straight away.

Connecting

The server address is https://app.traceabledocs.com/api/mcp/mcp.

• claude.ai (web, desktop, mobile): Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, paste the address, then sign in to Traceable and approve the consent screen.
• Claude Code: run claude mcp add --transport http traceable https://app.traceabledocs.com/api/mcp/mcp, then follow the sign-in prompt the first time a Traceable tool is used.

The consent screen asks for two permissions: Read your projects and documents, and Create and edit document content.

What it can do

• Explore: list your organisations and projects, map a project's groups, documents and headings, show the trace link graph between documents, list templates, and read a document as an outline or in full.
• Author: create a document (optionally from a template), insert or replace blocks, replace a whole segment, delete a block, and update document metadata including heading auto-numbering.
• ID grids: add a column, rename a column header, change a column's type (including dropdown options and calculation sources), and set a single cell. These edit in place and keep every row's trace links intact. Summary columns stay app-only.
• Traceability: create and delete trace links, rename a TraceID in place without breaking its links, and re-prefix a whole document's TraceIDs.
• Reference Library: list, index, search and read items you can access, and cite an item or another document on a document.

Ask in plain language, and name things precisely: document numbers (TD01-003), TraceIDs (FR-012), and REF codes (REF-00001A) remove the guesswork. For example: "Read TD01-002 and list every user need with no downstream requirement."

What it cannot do

Publishing, reviews, approvals and e-signature. Creating projects, organisations or users. Uploading images or attachments. Deleting a live document (only an archived one can be deleted, and that is permanent). Reading PDFs, PowerPoint or images in the Reference Library.

What happens to your documents

A write to a published document opens a new draft first, and the published version stays intact in history. Edits get their own line on the Versions timeline, like one of your own editing sessions.

While a project has Require AI change review on (Organisation → Projects, admin only, on by default), every row an assistant writes appears in the document's Agent panel under Pending for a contributor or admin to Acknowledge. Block deletions are soft and recoverable, and links to a deleted row are marked broken rather than vanishing.

Prefer targeted edits to wholesale rewrites. Replacing a whole segment soft-deletes its rows and breaks links to them, so ask to "update FR-012" or "add a column to that grid" instead.

Managing access

Account → Connected apps lists every app you have authorised and lets you revoke one. Revoking stops it obtaining new access; access it already holds stops working within the hour. Admins can also revoke a member's connection from Organisation → Members.

If the connector suddenly stops working, reconnect: it is served by the app itself, so it drops briefly on every deployment.