Connect Claude to Folio
Ask Claude about your team wiki from claude.ai or Claude Desktop, and let it write back. Folio is a remote MCP server with OAuth, so Claude adds it as a custom connector. You sign in to your own Folio account. Claude gets your rights and nothing more.
A question and a write-back
Ask:
What is our refund process? Give me the link to the page. Then add the notes from today's Product sync as a new page under Meetings, and put the three action items in the Actions table.
Claude searches the wiki, reads the page and answers with its link. The notes appear as a page in the tree, the action items as rows in the table, and the Git history shows the commit under your name.
Connect
What you need
- A Folio instance reachable over HTTPS from the public internet. Anthropic's servers make the requests, not your computer, so localhost does not work.
- PUBLIC_URL set to that address on the Folio side. Folio builds its OAuth metadata from it.
- A Claude plan that offers custom connectors. Anthropic's help page lists Free (one connector), Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise, as of 6 October 2026.
- A Folio account. Folio has no self-registration, so an administrator invites you.
Steps
Step 1: Check that your Folio answers the way an OAuth client expects. An unauthenticated request must get a 401 with a WWW-Authenticate header that points to the metadata.
bashcurl -si -X POST https://your-folio.example.com/mcp \ -H 'content-type: application/json' -d '{}' | head -8Step 2: In Claude on the web or in Claude Desktop, open Customize, then Connectors. Click the plus, then Add custom connector. On Team and Enterprise an Owner adds it under Organization settings, Connectors, Add, Custom, Web. Name it Folio and paste the address.
Remote MCP server URLhttps://your-folio.example.com/mcpStep 3: Leave the OAuth client settings on their defaults. Folio accepts Dynamic Client Registration and client ID metadata documents, so you do not need a client ID or a secret.
Step 4: Click Connect. Folio opens its sign-in page, then a consent screen that names the app, where you will be sent back to, and whether it may also write. Choose read to start. Allow.
Step 5: Turn the Folio connector on in a chat and ask a question. Claude Desktop uses the same Connectors page: a remote connector added to your account connects from Anthropic's servers, so the claude_desktop_config.json file is not involved.
Try it against the demo
Use the same flow with https://demo.foliowiki.online/mcp. On Folio's sign-in screen pick Sam. Start with read, and ask: "Find the Release process page and tell me which checklist items are still open."
https://demo.foliowiki.online/mcpOpen the prefilled Add custom connector form
The demo login is shared and the data resets every 24 hours, which also removes your connection. Pages written by other visitors are untrusted data, so do not connect an agent that has a shell or your own keys, and do not enter personal data. Requests are rate limited.
What the agent can do
Folio exposes 23 tools over MCP. Full reference.
| Reading (11) | What it does |
|---|---|
list_spaces | Spaces you can see, with your role in each |
list_tree | The page tree of a space |
search_pages | Full-text search across the pages you can open |
read_page | A page as Markdown, with its metadata |
resolve_folio_url | A Folio link to the page it points at |
get_backlinks | Pages that link to a page |
page_history | The Git commits that touched a page |
page_at_sha | A page as it was at a given commit |
folio_table_list | Data tables in a space |
folio_table_schema | A table's real columns, types and options |
folio_table_query | Table rows with filter, sort and search |
search | The same search under the name ChatGPT deep research looks for |
fetch | A page by the id that search returned, as Markdown |
| Writing (10) | What it does |
|---|---|
create_page | A new document with text, or a table with columns |
update_page | Replace the text of a page; merges with live editing |
create_board | A whiteboard from a short description of boxes and arrows |
update_board | Replace a whiteboard's scene |
board_ops | Align, distribute, move or auto-layout board elements |
folio_table_create | A table with an explicit schema |
folio_table_add_column | A new column |
folio_table_insert | New rows |
folio_table_update | Cells, by row id or by filter |
folio_table_delete | Rows, by id |
- Reading needs the read scope. Writing needs write. With read only, every tool that changes something refuses to run.
- All 23 tools carry read-only or destructive annotations, so a client can ask before it writes.
- An agent cannot manage access rights, invite people, or rename and delete spaces. Those actions exist only in the browser.
- A write reaches the page file at once. The Git commit follows after about 90 seconds of quiet, so page history can lag behind an edit.
Security
- You sign in to your own Folio account and choose read, or read and write, on the consent screen. The connection acts with your rights and nothing more: a page you cannot open stays invisible to it.
- Writes are saved to Git history under your name.
- Access tokens last one hour and are renewed by a refresh token that rotates on every use. Folio stores only hashes of them.
- To disconnect, open the user menu, then API tokens, then Connected apps, and remove the app. Its tokens stop working immediately. Disabling the user does the same.
- An OAuth token works on /mcp only, not on the REST API.
- Page content is data, not instructions. Folio's tool descriptions say so, but the real protection is rights. An agent that also has a shell and write access can be misled by a page someone else wrote, so give it the narrowest token that does the job.
Limits and honest notes
- claude.ai has no field for a personal access token. A static token works only where Anthropic has enabled custom request headers, which it offers to a limited set of organizations.
- Folio is not listed in Anthropic's connector directory. You add it by its address.
- A connection is per Folio user. Everyone in a team connects with their own account and sees what that account may see.