You can connect Claude, ChatGPT, or another app that supports MCP (Model Context Protocol) to Terminus Hub. Once connected, you can ask it things like “build the tagged URLs for next week’s newsletter” or “find the short link for the spring launch”. The app looks up the right taxonomy, fills in the fields, and shows you the draft before anything goes live. If you are an owner or admin, you can also ask it to change a governance model and publish the change once you approve it. It acts as you, with your permissions, in one account. Connected apps are available on every plan.
Before you start
- You need a Terminus Hub account and a member role that lets you do what you plan to ask for. A connected app can do nothing you cannot do in Terminus yourself. For example, a viewer’s app cannot create submissions.
- Your account must allow app connections. Owners and admins control this with Allow members to connect apps on the Security page.
- If your account requires two-factor authentication, set it up first, unless you sign in to that account through its single sign-on. See Profile settings.
- Claude (on the web, Claude Desktop, and Claude Code) and ChatGPT can connect. Cursor cannot connect yet.
Connect an app
1
Copy the Terminus MCP URL
The URL is
https://mcp.terminus.app/mcp. You can also copy it in Terminus: open the user menu at the bottom of the sidebar and choose Connected apps. Until you connect an app, that page shows the URL with a copy button.2
Add Terminus as a connector in your AI app
In your AI app’s settings, add a custom connector (it may be called an MCP server or an app) and paste the URL. The app then sends you to Terminus. Each app’s own help explains where to add it:
- Claude on the web and Claude Desktop: Get started with custom connectors using remote MCP. On Claude Team and Enterprise plans, an owner adds the connector for the organization first.
-
Claude Code: Connect Claude Code to tools via MCP. Run the command below, then run
/mcpinside Claude Code and choose Terminus to sign in. - ChatGPT: Developer mode and MCP apps in ChatGPT. ChatGPT adds MCP servers as custom apps in developer mode, and your ChatGPT plan decides who can turn that on and whether the app may take write actions such as creating submissions.
Terminus connects with OAuth: you sign in to Terminus and approve the app, and it never needs a password, token, or key from you. If your AI app offers a choice of authentication, choose OAuth. Leave any OAuth Client ID and OAuth Client Secret fields empty, because the app identifies itself to Terminus and Terminus does not issue client IDs or secrets. Don’t add an authorization header or an API key: API keys do not work for connected apps.
3
Sign in and review the request
If you are not signed in to Terminus, sign in first (with your password, two-factor code, or SSO). The consent page, headed Connect app name to Terminus, shows the domain the app identifies itself from and lists What it can do. For Claude and ChatGPT, that is:
- View your governance models, taxonomies, and allowed values
- Create submissions and submit them as you
- View the links and records you can access
- Edit your governance models and publish changes you confirm
4
Choose an account
Under Account, pick the account the app works in. If you belong to only one account that can connect, it is already selected. An account that cannot connect is greyed out with the reason (see Troubleshooting).
5
Allow
Click Allow. You return to your AI app, which is now connected. Click Deny to cancel instead.
What you can ask it to do
The app decides which tool to use based on what you ask. Your AI app may ask you to approve each tool call, and it shows these names when it does. For a walkthrough of building links this way, see Build URLs with Claude.
When the app builds links or reads records, it only sees what is published. Unpublished edits to a governance model stay invisible to those tools until you publish a revision, and a taxonomy added since the last publish does not appear at all. The governance model tools are the exception: they read and change the unpublished draft.
Review what the app creates
The app works through the same submission pipeline as you do in Terminus:create_submissiononly builds a draft. Ask the app to show you the preview, and check it before you tell it to submit.- When you ask it to submit,
submit_submissionrefuses if the draft changed since the preview or if the published rules would now produce different values. Terminus updates the draft and asks the app to show it to you again. - Workspace review rules and plan limits apply exactly as they do in the app. Only the submission’s author or a workspace admin can edit or submit it.
Change a governance model from chat
If you are an account owner or admin and the app has the Edit governance access, you can ask it to refine an existing governance model: add a source to a picklist, create a field and place it in a taxonomy, or turn your team’s spreadsheet of UTM rules into fields and picklists. It cannot create a new governance model. To have it build a new account’s first setup from your spreadsheet, start from the welcome screen: see Build your setup with Claude.- It works on the shared draft. The app edits the same unpublished draft you and your teammates edit in Terminus, and can see their unpublished changes too. Nothing changes for people building links until the model is published.
- It previews first. Terminus tells the app to preview each change, show you the result with any errors and warnings, and apply it only after you agree.
- You decide when to publish or discard. The app shows you the pending changes and publishes or discards only when you say so. If the draft changed after you reviewed it, for example because a teammate edited it in Terminus, nothing is published or discarded, and the app shows you the changes again.
- Publishing follows the same rules as in Terminus. Blocking errors stop the publish until they are fixed, and plan limits apply as they do when you publish yourself. See publish a revision.
- Some changes are made in Terminus. The app can create and change Text, URL, Dropdown, Date, Constant, Concatenation, and Tagged URL fields and static picklists. Creating or changing other field types, automated picklists, or dropdowns on an automated picklist or with Picklist Rules, and deleting a taxonomy, are done in Terminus, and the app gives you a link to the right page.
QR codes from an app
When the app reads a record or submission with a QR Code field, it gets the QR code’s content and a link to its image. The app can show the image or give you the link to open or download it.- The image link works without signing in for 7 days after the app read it. After that, ask the app to look up the record again for a fresh link.
- Anyone with the link can view that one image. The link cannot be changed to encode something else, but its contents (the QR content, its caption or the record’s Terminus ID, and account and QR style IDs) are readable by anyone holding it.
- A link already handed out keeps working until it expires, even after the app is disconnected.
- If your account is locked for billing, its QR image links stop working right away, the same as its short links.
How long a connection lasts
A connection ends 30 days after the app last used it, or 90 days after you connected it, whichever comes first. The consent page tells you the maximum before you click Allow. When a connection ends, connect the app again from the AI app. A connection also stops working:- Right away when you are suspended or removed from the account, or when an admin turns off Allow members to connect apps.
- The next time the app uses it after an admin resets your two-factor authentication.
- Temporarily while the account is locked for billing, or while the account requires two-factor authentication and you have not set it up (a connection you approved while signed in through the account’s SSO is not affected). It resumes once that is fixed, unless it reached its 30 or 90 day limit meanwhile.
See and disconnect your apps
Open the user menu at the bottom of the sidebar and choose Connected apps. The list shows each app with its Access (the permissions it has), Last used, and Expires. To disconnect one, click its delete icon, then Disconnect. The app loses access right away. You can connect it again later. If a row says “New: record access. Reconnect this app from app name to enable.” (or names governance editing, which only owners and admins are offered), the app was connected without that access, usually because you connected it before Terminus offered it. Disconnect the app, then connect it again from the AI app to grant it.For admins: manage connected apps
Account owners and admins can see every member’s connections. In the account menu, choose Settings, then Connected Apps. The list adds a Member column, and you can filter by app when more than one app is connected.- To see one member’s apps, open the member from Members and click Connected apps.
- To revoke one connection, click its delete icon, then Revoke. Revoke all revokes every connection in the account, or every connection for one member if you opened the page from their profile. The app filter does not narrow it. Members can connect again unless you also turn off app connections.
- To stop all app connections, turn off Allow members to connect apps on the Security page. Every connected app in the account is disconnected immediately, and members cannot connect new ones.