Connect Airpdf to Claude Desktop in 60 seconds

Airpdf ships with a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. Once connected, Claude (or Cursor, or any MCP-aware client) can list, draft, preview and publish your PDF templates straight from chat — no code required.

1. Add the connector in Claude Desktop

Open Claude Desktop → Settings → Connectors → Add a custom MCP server.

Paste this URL:

https://airpdf.app/mcp

A browser tab opens to Airpdf. Sign in (or pick the workspace if you have several) and click Allow Claude Desktop on the consent screen.

Claude Desktop should show Connected within a few seconds. Done.

2. Try it

Open a new Claude chat and try one of these prompts:

"List my Airpdf templates."

"Create a draft delivery-note template. The data carries sender, recipient, and an array of items (each with description and qty). Make it landscape. Preview the result for me."

"The header looks too small. Bump it up and re-preview."

"Looks good — publish it."

Claude takes care of calling the right tools at each step. You stay in control: nothing reaches the live state until you explicitly say "publish".

3. What can the AI actually do?

Tool	Effect	Read/Write
`list_templates`	List the templates in your workspace	Read
`get_template`	Inspect a single template	Read
`create_template`	Save a new template as a draft	Write (draft)
`update_template`	Patch the draft of an existing template	Write (draft)
`publish_template`	Promote the draft → live + snapshot a version	Write (live)
`preview_render`	Render a watermarked PDF preview (no quota burn)	Read
`validate_data`	Schema-check your sample data	Read
`author_guide`	Returns Claude's authoring prompt	Read

Important safety rule: the AI never writes to the live version of a template. The only path live → live is your explicit publish_template instruction. Draft edits are sandboxed and previews carry a TEST watermark — there's no way for an AI mistake to ship a broken template to your customers.

4. Revoke a connection

If you ever lose the Claude Desktop instance, or want to rotate access:

Sign in to your Airpdf workspace.
Go to Settings → AI Connections.
Click Revoke next to the connection you want to disable.

The next call from that client will get a 401 Unauthorized immediately.

Access tokens are short-lived (1 hour by default) and the client refreshes them transparently using its refresh token, which itself expires after 30 days. If you don't use a connection for more than 30 days you'll need to re-do the consent flow.

5. Troubleshooting

Claude Desktop says "Connection failed".

Check that your account has at least one workspace.
The consent screen should appear in your browser; if it doesn't, visit https://airpdf.app/mcp/oauth/authorize directly and check whether you're signed in.

Claude says "I can't see any templates."

You're in the wrong workspace. The OAuth flow ties the AI connection to one workspace — re-authorise from the right one.

Preview PDFs are watermarked.

Always. MCP connections are sandboxed to a test rendering path; the watermark cannot be removed via the API. Real production renders happen via your live API key over the standard /api/v1/render endpoint.

Next steps

Tool reference: MCP tools (full schemas, returns)
Set up live rendering: REST API reference