Turn a customer research repository into something your assistant can actually query
Connect Dovetail to Claude, Cursor or any other MCP client and it stops being a tab you switch to. Official Dovetail MCP server. Search projects, docs, highlights and Channels feedback, read full markdown content, and create research artifacts from chat. The dovetail mcp server is what makes that connection.
Official Dovetail MCP server. Search projects, docs, highlights and Channels feedback, read full markdown content, and create research artifacts from chat.
Setup follows the usual MCP pattern — install or clone the server, register it in your client's configuration file, restart the client. The configuration blocks on this page cover the common clients.
The toolset is worth reading before you wire it up, because it tells you what the integration is really for:
search_workspace — Search across every content type in the Dovetail workspace at onceget_dovetail_projects — List all projects in the workspaceget_project — Fetch a single project by its IDcreate_project — Create a new Dovetail projectlist_folders — List folders in the workspace hierarchyget_folder_contents — List everything directly inside a folderlist_project_data — List the data entries stored in a projectget_data_content — Return a single data entry's content as markdownget_project_highlights — Fetch the highlights captured in a projectcreate_transcript_highlight — Create a highlight anchored to an audio or video transcriptlist_docs — List all docs in the workspaceget_doc_content — Return a doc's full body as markdownConfiguration is passed through the environment: DOVETAIL_API_TOKEN. Treat anything key-shaped as a real credential — scope it to the minimum the server needs, and rotate it if it ever lands in a shared config.
A Dovetail workspace plus either an MCP client that can complete Dovetail's OAuth flow or a Dovetail API token for bearer auth.
Plenty of knowledge and memory servers cover similar ground. The differences that matter in practice are scope of access and how much setup stands between you and a working tool call. Dovetail's toolset — search_workspace, get_dovetail_projects, get_project and 17 more — is a fair guide to whether it matches your workflow. It is maintained by Dovetail rather than a third party, which usually means auth handling and breaking changes are dealt with faster.
We check each listing at SyncDev against the project's documentation before it goes live — if something here drifts out of date, it is a bug worth reporting.
Ask what customers said about a feature and get back highlights and transcript excerpts with links, instead of a recollection from whoever ran the interviews.
Have an assistant read a project's highlights and data entries, then create the summary doc directly in Dovetail so the artifact lives where the team expects it.
Pull the raw data points and derived themes flowing into a Channel, cluster them, and push structured notes back as new channel data.
Look up a contact, retrieve every highlight and doc tied to their account, and get a one-page brief before the meeting starts.
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| search_workspace | Search across every content type in the Dovetail workspace at once. |
| get_dovetail_projects | List all projects in the workspace. |
| get_project | Fetch a single project by its ID. |
| create_project | Create a new Dovetail project. |
| list_folders | List folders in the workspace hierarchy. |
| get_folder_contents | List everything directly inside a folder. |
| list_project_data | List the data entries stored in a project. |
| get_data_content | Return a single data entry's content as markdown. |
| get_project_highlights | Fetch the highlights captured in a project. |
| create_transcript_highlight | Create a highlight anchored to an audio or video transcript. |
| list_docs | List all docs in the workspace. |
| get_doc_content | Return a doc's full body as markdown. |
| create_doc | Create a new doc in a project. |
| create_comment | Post a comment on a doc. |
| list_channels | List the feedback Channels configured in the workspace. |
| list_channel_themes | List the themes Dovetail has derived for a channel. |
| create_channel_datum | Send a new feedback data point into a channel. |
| list_contacts | List the research contacts in the workspace. |
| list_tags | List tags scoped to a project. |
| download_file | Generate a short-lived presigned download URL for a file attachment. |
claude mcp add dovetail --transport http https://dovetail.com/api/mcpA Dovetail workspace plus either an MCP client that can complete Dovetail's OAuth flow or a Dovetail API token for bearer auth.
| Variable | Description | Required |
|---|---|---|
| DOVETAIL_API_TOKEN | Dovetail API token, sent as an Authorization: Bearer header. Only needed for clients that cannot do the OAuth browser flow.e.g. dt_live_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | Optional |
A knowledge graph your assistant keeps between sessions — entities, relations and observations that persist.
Kill hallucinated APIs — version-accurate, up-to-date library documentation injected straight into context.
Your workspace, on speaking terms with AI — search, read and write Notion pages and databases.
A structured scratchpad for hard problems — stepwise reasoning with revisions, branches and visible logic.
Symbol-level code navigation, refactoring and memory for coding agents — the IDE brain your assistant has been missing.
Chat with your second brain — search, read and write vault notes through the Local REST API.