Connecting your AI assistant to your club as staff

Staff can connect Claude, or another supported AI tool, to the club's admin pages to look things up and prepare work. The tool signs in as the person who connects it, not as a separate account. It can do only what that person's role allows, everything it does is recorded under that person's name, and it asks for approval before anything consequential.

For your own programs and scripts, use an API key instead, which has no person behind it. Admins can open API keys beside Connect your AI in the navigation or from the setup page. See API keys and the public API.

Connected tools are off until an admin turns them on. Open Club → Staff & tools, and under Connected agent tools set these switches:

• Allow staff to connect Claude and other agent tools: the main switch. Off by default. Turning it off again disconnects every staff connection.

• Let connected tools make changes (with your approval for consequential ones): when off, connected tools can only look. When on, they can make everyday changes (notes, tasks, tags, schedules) right away, and must ask you to approve anything that messages a member, moves money, or changes settings, roles or how someone signs in.

• Allow agent tools we haven't verified yet: leave this off unless you know you need it. See below.

Under Approval limits on the same page you can set the amount above which a money action needs a typed code as well as an approval, and the daily limit for checks a connected tool may record.

1. Select Connect your AI in the Club section of the admin navigation. On a phone, open the navigation menu first. Every staff role can see this link, including when connections are turned off; the page explains how to have an admin turn them on.

2. Pick the app you use (Claude in a browser, Claude on iPhone or iPad, Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or another) to see the steps.

3. Copy your club's MCP address and add it in the app as a custom connector. Email me these steps sends them to you.

4. Sign in the way you already do for this club, then approve the connection.

Choose an AI app that supports custom connections. You’ll sign in with your staff account. Your app’s plan or workplace settings may require permission to add a connection. The page also offers Try these first: ready-made requests you can copy into your assistant. It says for each whether it only looks things up or can change things.

Never paste an API key or a password into a chat with an AI tool. A connected tool does not need one: it signs in as you.

A connection lasts up to 180 days even if nobody disconnects it, and either looks only or can look and act, depending on what the person approved and the switches above. Connections are limited to 120 requests a minute and 1,500 an hour; past that the tool is told to wait a moment. See What Claude can and can't do here and Approving an action.

Only tools on Swim Ops' verified list, such as Claude, can connect unless an admin turns on Allow agent tools we haven't verified yet. A tool that isn't verified is always shown by its web address with a Not verified by Swim Ops warning: on the approval screen, in the email the person gets when it connects, and in the connection lists. Any tool can call itself "Claude", so only approve one you set up yourself and whose web address you trust.