Connect Uku to Claude (AI assistant, MCP)

Connecting Claude to Uku lets you ask an AI assistant about your clients, tasks and hours in plain language. You can also have it log time or draft tasks for you.

Any active member of a company on the Elite plan can connect their own account by signing in from Claude. The sign-in route needs no special access level in Uku.

The connection is personal. The connection acts as the person who signed in, with exactly that person’s access. Nobody can set up a Claude connection for a colleague, so each person connects their own.

Only Company Owners and Company Admins see the Public API tab, and only they can generate the assistant key the headless route needs. Company Members never see API keys at all.

You need nothing from Uku beyond your normal login. The whole setup happens in Claude.

1. In Claude, open Customize → Connectors. Click Add custom connector.
2. Paste https://app.getuku.com/mcp as the address, name it Uku, and click Add.
3. Leave Advanced settings alone. The OAuth client ID and secret there are optional, and Uku registers your Claude app automatically.
4. Click Connect. A browser window opens on Uku’s Connect to Uku? screen, naming the app that is asking. The screen carries the line “It can see and do only what you can.”
5. Sign in to Uku if you are not signed in already, and pick the company to give access to.
6. Click Allow. Claude now sees Uku in every chat.

On a Claude Team or Enterprise plan, an organisation Owner adds the connector once under Organization settings → Connectors. Each member then signs in themselves.

Behind the scenes Uku creates a personal key for the connection. The key lasts 24 hours and renews itself while the connection stays authorised. The key appears in the key list on the Public API tab, and deleting it there stops the connection immediately.

Signing in is the recommended route for Claude Code too, and no key changes hands.

1. Run claude mcp add --transport http uku https://app.getuku.com/mcp.
2. In Claude Code, type /mcp, select uku, and choose Authenticate.
3. A browser opens. Sign in to Uku and click Allow.

Run claude mcp list to see whether uku is connected. Run claude mcp remove uku to take the connection out again.

On a server, a container or any machine with no browser, there is nobody to click Allow. Use an assistant key instead, in Claude Code’s own .mcp.json file.

Path: Settings & Apps → Public API → Public API

1. Open Settings & Apps and go to Public API. The dialog opens on the Public API tab, beside Overview and (old) API.
2. At the step Copy your Company UUID, click Copy. The value is your X-Uku-Company header.
3. Scroll to the Connect an AI assistant (Claude) panel and expand Developer setup (Claude Code and other clients that take headers).
4. Click Generate assistant key, then Copy configuration. The block already carries both values.
5. Put the block in .mcp.json.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "uku": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://app.getuku.com/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "X-Uku-Company": "YOUR_COMPANY_UUID",
        "X-API-Key": "YOUR_ASSISTANT_KEY"
      }
    }
  }
}

The address you connect decides how much of Uku the assistant sees. https://app.getuku.com/mcp is the whole assistant: every action, one connection. Most firms want exactly that, and can stop reading here.

Uku also publishes four narrower addresses. Each one carries a slice of the assistant, and you connect as many as you need:

Connect /mcp/core alongside whichever others you want. The core address holds the shared actions the rest build on, so a connection without it is much weaker. Add each address as its own custom connector and sign in to each. In Claude Code, run claude mcp add again with a different name, such as uku-work.

Claude reaches at most what your own Uku login reaches, and in a few places less. Financial data is the one thing a personal connection does not carry by default. The checkbox on the sign-in screen is the only way to add it.

Most changes show you a preview and wait for your approval. A short list acts on the first request instead, including logging time, creating a task, uploading a file and refreshing the performance figures. What the AI assistant can do sets out both lists in full, along with the areas the assistant deliberately cannot reach. Your data and AI assistants covers what travels to your AI provider and what Uku records.

Every connection is a credential to your own Uku view. Remove one the moment you no longer need it.

• Remove a signed-in connection in Claude, by removing the connector. You can also delete its row from the key list on the Public API tab. Deleting the row stops the connection immediately, even if Claude still shows it as connected.
• Each row shows its key prefix, such as uku_live_xxx…, so you can match a row to the connection it belongs to. A help icon at the end of the row shows when the key was last used, its IP allowlist and when it was created.
• A signed-in connection renews its own 24-hour key while it stays authorised. An assistant key generated by hand never expires.
• A deactivated member’s connection stops working. Uku checks on every single request that the owner is still an active member of the company.
• A plan downgrade takes the connection down. The plan is checked on every request. Move your firm off Elite and a working Claude connection goes dark straight away.
• Uku records what the assistant did — which action was called, when, and by which person and key. The names and types of the values passed are stored, rather than the values themselves.

• Nothing happens after you paste the address. Your Claude plan may not include custom connectors. On a Team or Enterprise plan, your organisation Owner may not have added Uku yet.
• You sign in, but Claude cannot call Uku. The connection row was deleted in Uku under Settings & Apps → Public API. Remove the connector in Claude and add it again.
• The consent screen refuses you. Your firm is not on the Elite plan.
• The connection worked before and is dead now. Your Uku membership was deactivated, or the connector was removed in Claude. Add it again and sign in.
• Financial figures are missing. The financial-data box was not ticked, or you do not hold the account-management right. Someone who holds it has to make the connection.

A signed-in connector calls Uku from Anthropic’s own servers, not from the computer you are sitting at. Uku’s address therefore has to be reachable from the public internet. A firewall rule, a VPN-only setup or a filter on incoming addresses blocks the connector while Uku still works normally in your browser. Claude Code is different, because it calls from your own machine.

Restart the Claude client. In Claude Code, run claude mcp list and confirm uku is connected.

If some actions are offered and others are missing, you have probably connected a narrower address. Check which address is configured against the table above.

The assistant key has been deleted, or one of the two values is wrong. Open the Public API tab and confirm the AI assistant (Claude) row is still listed. Generate a new key, copy the Company UUID again, and replace both values. Replacing only the key leaves a wrong company identifier in place, which fails the same way.

A 403 carrying a message about your plan means the firm is no longer on Elite.

A key goes into a file, never into a conversation. If you pasted one into a chat, the key is now in that transcript. Delete its row from the key list on the Public API tab and generate a new one.

The Connect an AI assistant (Claude) panel is visible on every plan, but shows its setup steps only on Elite. To check which plan your firm is on, go to Settings & Apps → Company → Overview; Uku plans explained covers what each plan includes.

You do not need the tab to sign in from Claude. The tab appears only for Company Owners and Company Admins, and needs the Public API app activated for your company on the Elite plan.

Uku does not provide Claude. You connect a Claude app you already use, and the Uku side of the connection comes with the Elite plan. Whether your Claude account can add a custom connector is set by Anthropic.