Management MCP

The Management MCP lets you work on your Doofinder account from an AI assistant such as ChatGPT or Claude. Once connected, you can ask your assistant to look at your search data and change your configuration in plain language, instead of clicking through the Admin Panel.

For example:

• "Why does 'trainers' return no results in my store?"
• "Add 'sneakers' and 'trainers' as synonyms."
• "Which search terms brought the most revenue last month?"

The assistant works only on your own account: the connection is authorized by you, and every action is limited to the stores and search engines your Doofinder user can already access.

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is the open standard that AI assistants use to connect to external services. In Claude, Doofinder is listed in the connectors directory, so you can add it in a couple of clicks, and it will be listed in the ChatGPT directory soon. In any other assistant, you connect it directly with its URL. Both options are explained in How to Connect.

Prerequisites

1. An Advanced or Enterprise plan. The connection is authorized with your own Doofinder user, so you also need access to the account you want to manage.

2. Permission to make changes, if you want more than answers. Reading your data and running search previews works as soon as you connect. Making changes to your configuration is switched off by default, so a new connection can look but not touch.

An account owner or an administrator switches it on with the Allow changes option, under Configuration > AI connectors in the Admin Panel:

https://admin.doofinder.com/admin/account/ai-connectors

The setting covers the whole account, not a single store. While it is off, your assistant tells you that changes are disabled and where to enable them, instead of failing silently.

What You Can Do With It

You describe what you want in your own words and the assistant does the looking up and the clicking for you. These are the jobs it covers today, with examples of what you can ask.

Understand What Your Shoppers Search For

• "What were my top search terms last month?"
• "Which searches returned no results?"
• "Has my search conversion rate dropped since the start of the month?"
• "Which products get the most clicks from search, and do they end up being bought?"

Find Out Why a Search Does Not Work

• "Why does 'trainers' return nothing in my store?"
• "Show me what a shopper sees when they search for 'winter coat'."

The assistant can run the search exactly as a shopper would and then check the synonyms, redirections and hidden products behind it, so you get the reason and not just the symptom.

Improve Your Results

• "Add 'sneakers' as a synonym of 'trainers'."
• "Send anyone searching for 'gift card' straight to my gift card page."
• "Hide this discontinued product from search."
• "Stop hiding out-of-stock products."

Keep Your Search Protected

• "Which IP ranges are blocked from my search?"
• "Block this range, it is scraping my catalogue."

Everything else stays in the Admin Panel: your data feed and indexing, plan and billing, users, and the design of your search layer.

How to Connect

The Management MCP uses OAuth: you never paste an API key into your assistant. When you add the connector, the assistant sends you to Doofinder to log in and authorize the connection, and you can revoke it later from the assistant.

From the Claude Directory

Doofinder is published in the Claude connectors directory, so you do not need to set up anything by hand.

1. Open the Doofinder page in the Claude directory: https://claude.ai/directory/doofinder
2. Click Connect. A Doofinder login window opens.
3. Log in and authorize the connection. The connector then appears as connected.

Connect Directly

If your assistant does not list Doofinder in its directory, or you prefer to set it up by hand, add a custom connector (also called a remote MCP server) with this URL:

https://admin.doofinder.com/mcp

Claude

1. Open Settings and go to Connectors.
2. Choose Add custom connector.
3. Give it a name, for example Doofinder, and paste the URL https://admin.doofinder.com/mcp.
4. Click the connector's Connect button. A Doofinder login window opens.
5. Log in and authorize the connection. The connector then appears as connected.

ChatGPT

Until Doofinder is listed in the ChatGPT directory, you add it as a custom MCP app.

1. Open ChatGPT Plugins, also available under Settings > Plugins.
2. Click Add and select Create MCP app.
3. Give it a name, for example Doofinder, paste the URL https://admin.doofinder.com/mcp and select OAuth as the authentication method.
4. Log in to Doofinder and authorize the connection in the window that opens.

For the details, including which ChatGPT plans support custom apps and how to use them in a conversation, see OpenAI's Connect and test your plugin guide. If your ChatGPT interface still asks you to turn on Developer mode, follow OpenAI's Developer mode guide.

A good first question is "list my Doofinder search engines". The assistant reads your stores and search engines, and from then on it knows which one you are talking about. If you have several, tell it which one to use before asking for analytics or configuration changes.

What Data Is Shared

The assistant only receives the answer to the question you asked, and only for the account you authorized. Nothing is sent to it in the background, and it cannot read anything outside your account.

Your assistant provider (OpenAI or Anthropic) processes the conversation and the data it receives under their own terms and privacy policy, so review theirs as well. How Doofinder handles your data is described in our Privacy Policy.

Limits and Things to Know

• Search previews do not record analytics. Testing a query through the assistant does not inflate your statistics.
• Analytics cover up to 90 days at a time. For a longer period, ask for it in several ranges.
• Top-terms and top-products answers are limited to the biggest ones, not every term or product in your catalogue.
• The assistant can be wrong. It proposes the changes, you approve them. Read what it is about to do, especially with synonyms and redirections, where a new rule can switch off an existing one that uses the same term.
• Revoking access: remove the connector in ChatGPT or Claude, or remove the user from the Doofinder account. Either one stops the connection immediately.

If something does not work as expected, contact our support team.