Use Chief with your AI coding agent

Chief gives your AI coding agent direct access to your project. Ask questions about everything your team has uploaded, add new documents, and automate the busywork — right from Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex. No SDK, no curl, no boilerplate to get started.

Claude Code runs on your computer, not in a browser tab. You may have chatted with Claude on the web — Claude Code is different: it runs in your terminal, so it can reach your files and your Chief project and build things for you. Once it’s connected you can both ask Chief questions and hand it these docs and have it build an integration for you. This guide sets up both.

What you’ll need

An AI coding agent installed — Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex. This guide uses Claude Code in its examples.
A terminal — the macOS Terminal app, or Windows Terminal / PowerShell on Windows. This is where you run the commands below.
A Chief account with access to a project.

New to the terminal or Claude Code? Start here.

The terminal is a text window where you type commands instead of clicking. To open one:

macOS — press Cmd + Space, type Terminal, and press Enter.
Windows — press the Start button and type Terminal, PowerShell, or Command Prompt. Any of the three works.

Claude Code is the agent that runs inside that terminal. Install it by following the official install guide, then type claude in your terminal to start it. Once it’s running, come back and follow the three steps below.If the install is blocked or warns you:

Windows may show “Windows protected your PC” (SmartScreen). Click More info → Run anyway.
macOS may say the app “can’t be opened.” Open System Settings → Privacy & Security and choose Open Anyway.
Locked-down work computers often block new software outright. If an install is refused no matter what, run through this on a personal computer instead.

These warnings are normal for new developer tools — they aren’t errors. Install only from the official links above, then allow it to run.

Connect your agent to Chief

Four steps and your agent is talking to Chief.

Install Claude Code

If you don’t have it yet, install Claude Code with the recommended native installer:

curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash

irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iex

Then type claude in your terminal to start it. For other install methods and troubleshooting, see the official install guide. Prefer Cursor or Codex? Use either — you’ll find their setup in step 4.

Get your Chief token

Sign in to Chief. Open your account menu (bottom-left), go to Settings, open the API tokens tab, and choose Create token. (The help center covers this screen in detail: API access & personal access tokens.)

Chief Settings showing the path to the API tokens tab and the Create token button — Account menu → Settings → API tokens → Create token.

Give the token a name, pick an expiration, and select Generate token.

Chief's Create a personal access token dialog with a name field and expiration selector — Name the token and choose an expiration, then Generate token.

Copy the token as soon as it appears — it starts with pat_.

The token is shown only once. Copy it now. If you lose it, delete it and create a new one — there’s no penalty.

You’ll also need your project id (it starts with project_). Find it in the URL of any project page — it’s the segment right after /project/:

Browser address bar showing a Chief project URL with the project id segment highlighted — Your project id is the /project/ segment of any project URL.

You’ll paste both into your agent’s config below.

Install the Chief MCP server

brew install --cask Storytell-ai/tap/chief-mcp

Other install options (Go, prebuilt binaries) are on the MCP server page.

Connect Claude Code

claude mcp add chief \
  -e CHIEF_API_KEY=<your-token> \
  -e CHIEF_PROJECT_ID=<your-project-id> \
  -- chief-mcp stdio

Restart Claude Code so it picks up the new server — that’s it.

Claude Code's /mcp panel showing the chief server connected with 44 tools — After connecting, /mcp shows the Chief server and its tools — that's how you know it worked.

Using Cursor or Codex instead?

Cursor
Codex

After install, open the server in Cursor Settings → MCP and fill in your CHIEF_API_KEY and CHIEF_PROJECT_ID. Prefer to paste config by hand? See MCP clients → Cursor.

Add to ~/.codex/config.toml:

[mcp_servers.chief]
command = "chief-mcp"
args = ["stdio"]
env = { CHIEF_API_KEY = "<your-token>", CHIEF_PROJECT_ID = "<your-project-id>" }

Using a different client, or want HTTP transport? The full matrix is on MCP clients.

Try it

Once your agent is connected, paste this in:

“Using Chief, what are the main themes across everything in my project?”

Your agent calls Chief, reads your project, and answers — no code from you. Ask it anything about your project: list what you’ve uploaded, summarize a document, or pull the themes across everything.

A Claude Code session using the Chief MCP tools to list the files uploaded to a project — Claude Code listing a project's files through the Chief MCP tools.

Have your agent build an integration for you

Connecting over MCP lets your agent talk to Chief. You can also ask it to build against the Chief API — a script, a sync job, whatever you need — and it will read this documentation and write the code. In your terminal, set your credentials so the agent doesn’t need them in the chat, then describe what you want:

export CHIEF_API_KEY="pat_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
export CHIEF_PROJECT_ID="project_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"

Starter prompts

A few prompts to start from — paste one in and adjust it to your goal:

“Read the Chief API docs at https://docs.chief.bot. Using CHIEF_API_KEY and CHIEF_PROJECT_ID from my environment, write a script that uploads every PDF in this folder to my project and labels them contracts.”
“Ask my Chief project for the three biggest risks across everything we’ve uploaded this quarter, and print the answer.”
“Create a Chief action that emails me a summary of new uploads every weekday morning.”
“Write a script that pulls this week’s new assets from my Chief project and posts a short summary to our team’s Slack channel.”

Point your agent straight at the docs and let it read what it needs. There’s an agent-readable index at https://docs.chief.bot/llms.txt.

The agent reads the reference, writes the code, and runs it. Start small, then build up.

FAQ

Do I need to write any code to use Chief from an agent?

No. Connect the MCP server and ask in plain language. Writing code is the alternative path, not a prerequisite.

Which agents can connect?

Any MCP client. Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Codex, and VS Code are covered here — see MCP clients for each one’s config.

Can the agent read these docs on its own?

Yes. There is an agent-readable index at https://docs.chief.bot/llms.txt. Point your agent at it and let it read what it needs.

Should I tell the agent which tool to call?

No. Give it the goal — “find and summarize…” — and let it plan the calls. The same request can correctly resolve through different tools on different runs.

Prefer to do it yourself?

Quickstart

Zero to a chat response with plain curl.

Go SDK

Typed Go client, one service per resource.

CLI

The chief command for scripts, CI, and your shell.

API reference

Every endpoint, with an interactive playground.

Get started

Guides

Use Chief with your AI coding agent

What you’ll need

Connect your agent to Chief

Try it

Have your agent build an integration for you

Starter prompts

FAQ

Prefer to do it yourself?

Quickstart

Go SDK

CLI

API reference

​What you’ll need

​Connect your agent to Chief

​Try it

​Have your agent build an integration for you

​Starter prompts

​FAQ

​Prefer to do it yourself?

Quickstart

Go SDK

CLI

API reference

What you’ll need

Connect your agent to Chief

Try it

Have your agent build an integration for you

Starter prompts

FAQ

Prefer to do it yourself?