Connect an AI assistant (MCP)

InstantCampaign runs a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. An MCP-capable AI assistant can use it to look up campaign results, check a template before a transactional send, write copy in your brand voice or draft a campaign, all inside your workspace.

What the assistant can do

Tool	What it does
`get_workspace_overview`	Counts of templates, campaigns, contacts, lists and segments, the contact status breakdown, and the 5 most recent campaigns
`list_templates`, `get_template`	Browse and read templates
`preview_template`	Render a template with a payload (or its sample data) and list the variables it reads and any that are unresolved
`list_campaigns`, `get_campaign_performance`	Campaigns with status, and their send, open and click statistics
`get_campaign_plan`, `get_ab_test_results`	The strategist’s plan for a campaign, and A/B test outcomes
`get_campaign_proposals`	This week’s proposed campaigns (accepting one happens in the app)
`get_audience_summary`	Contact totals by status, and lists and segments with their sizes. Aggregates only
`check_contact_status`	Whether an email address is a contact, its status and how many lists it is on
`get_message_log`	Recent individual emails with delivery status, opens and clicks, to answer “did X get the email?”
`get_analytics_overview`, `get_web_analytics`	Email analytics and website traffic
`get_brand_config`, `get_usage_report`	Brand colours, fonts and voice, and this month’s usage per quota
`generate_copy`, `generate_image`	Email copy in your brand voice, and marketing images
`create_template_draft`, `duplicate_template`	Create a new draft template, or copy an existing one
`create_campaign`	Create a campaign from a brief. The strategist writes the emails and plan
`create_journey_from_brief`	Draft an automation from a one-sentence description

The assistant cannot send email or start anything. Campaigns created through MCP wait for someone to approve the plan in the app, and journeys are created as drafts that never activate by themselves.

Privacy

MCP clients pass tool results to their own AI models, so every result goes through the same privacy filter as the in-app assistant. Contact tools return aggregates, statuses and ids, never lists of people. Every output passes a redaction layer that removes email addresses, names, phone numbers and postal addresses. For example, check_contact_status looks up an address you already have but never returns it.

Connect

Create a key for the assistant

In Settings → Developers → API Keys, click Create New Key. Name it after the assistant, and under Permissions tick only AI assistant (MCP). That key can then use the MCP server but not the rest of the API. See API keys.

Add the server to your client

Configure an MCP server with the Streamable HTTP transport:

URL: https://instantcampaign.ai/api/mcp
Header: Authorization: Bearer ic_your_key_here

For example, in Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http instantcampaign https://instantcampaign.ai/api/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer ic_your_key_here"

Try it

Ask the assistant something like “How did my last three campaigns perform?” It should call list_campaigns and get_campaign_performance.

Limits

Rate limit: 60 requests per minute per workspace. Beyond that the server answers 429.
Plan quotas: tools count against your plan’s monthly quotas, as they do in the app. create_campaign counts against campaign generations, generate_copy and create_journey_from_brief use AI text generations, generate_image uses AI image generations, and create_template_draft and duplicate_template count as templates. When a quota is used up, the tool returns an error saying so.
Transport: the server answers each request with plain JSON. It does not open server-initiated streams and issues no session id. Clients that support Streamable HTTP work as is.

Seeing what the assistant did

Every MCP call is recorded in Settings → Developers → API log under the /api/mcp path, with the tool call as the request body. See API request log.

Troubleshooting

Error	Cause	Fix
`401 Invalid or missing API key`	The header is missing, or the key was deleted or has expired	Check the `Authorization` header in your client config
`403` “This API key lacks the “mcp” scope”	The key was created with other scopes and without AI assistant (MCP)	Create a key with the MCP scope
`429 Rate limit exceeded`	More than 60 calls in a minute	Wait a minute; agents that loop quickly can hit this
Tool error about a quota being used up	A monthly plan quota is spent	Upgrade the plan, or wait for the next month

​What the assistant can do

​Privacy

​Connect

​Limits

​Seeing what the assistant did

​Troubleshooting

What the assistant can do

Privacy

Connect

Limits

Seeing what the assistant did

Troubleshooting