Birdwave for assistants

Use Birdwave from ChatGPT or Claude

Ask your AI assistant about robotics products and it answers from Birdwave Atlas: specifications with their sources, what fits with what, and who makes it. Catalog questions need no account. Signing in lets it read your own projects, and nothing more.

The address to add

https://atlas.birdwave.io/mcp

Birdwave speaks the Model Context Protocol (MCP), the open standard ChatGPT, Claude and many coding tools use to plug in outside services.

What you can ask

“Which parallel grippers have at least 40 mm stroke, and do they fit a UR5e?”
“What payload does Birdwave list for the UR5e, and where does that number come from?”
“Who makes collaborative robots in Denmark?”

Your assistant picks from these tools:

Search the robotics catalog: Find robots, grippers, sensors, cameras and more by what they must do or the specs they need.
Get a product: One product: who makes it, its specifications and the source of each.
What the catalog holds: The kinds of products in Atlas, how many of each, and the specs each kind is described by.
What a spec means: What one specification means on Birdwave, its unit, and the ways makers write it.
What fits a product: What mounts on, plugs into or exchanges data with a product, and what each pairing still needs.
Find organisations: Manufacturers, integrators, distributors and labs, by name or by what they do.

With your Birdwave account signed in, also:

My Birdwave account: Your name and membership status.
My projects: Your projects in Atlas and Studio.
Get one of my projects: One of your projects, with its products.

Every tool only reads. None of them can change anything in Birdwave or in your account.

Add Birdwave to your assistant

Claude (web and desktop)

Open Customize › Connectors, click + Add, then Add custom connector.
Name it Birdwave and paste the address above.
For sign-in, choose Sign in when needed: catalog questions work at once, and Claude asks you to sign in the first time it needs your account. On the second step Claude may mark No sign-in as detected and select it, because catalog questions need no account; switch it back before you click Add.
In a chat, turn it on under + › Connectors.

The Free plan allows one custom connector. On Team and Enterprise plans an Owner adds it under Organization settings › Connectors, and each member then clicks Connect.

Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http birdwave https://atlas.birdwave.io/mcp

Then run /mcp, choose Birdwave and authenticate when you want it to read your projects.

ChatGPT

Open Plugins, click Add, then Create custom MCP server. If that option is missing, turn on Developer mode in Settings › Security and login first; your plan or workspace decides whether it is offered.
Name it Birdwave and paste the address above.
For Authentication, choose OAuth or no authentication: catalog questions work at once, and ChatGPT asks you to sign in the first time it needs your account. Then confirm and create it.
When ChatGPT offers Sign in with Birdwave or Use without an account, either works.
In a chat, add Birdwave from the + menu.

If you disconnect it in Settings › Connected apps, ChatGPT asks you to reconnect before it uses Birdwave again, catalog questions included.

Cursor

Add this to ~/.cursor/mcp.json (or .cursor/mcp.json in a project):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "birdwave": {
      "url": "https://atlas.birdwave.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

VS Code

Run MCP: Add Server from the Command Palette, choose HTTP and enter the address above. It writes:

{
  "servers": {
    "birdwave": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://atlas.birdwave.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Signing in

When a tool needs your account, your assistant opens Birdwave's sign-in. You sign in to Birdwave itself, never to the assistant, and then see exactly what it asks for:

Know which Birdwave account is connected
Stay connected until you disconnect it
Read your name and membership status
Read your projects in Atlas and Studio

Only approved Birdwave members can connect an assistant. Every new connection is emailed to you, and you can disconnect any of them at once in Settings › Connected apps.

API keys for machines

Machines such as bw-runner on a cell PC, and your own scripts, use a personal API key instead of signing in. Create one in Settings › API keys: name it, pick what it may do (Report runs, Read my projects) and when it expires (30, 90 or 365 days). It is shown once.

A machine trades its key for a token that lasts 15 minutes, and uses that token with Birdwave's API. The token can do only what its key allows; anything else is refused.

curl -X POST https://atlas.birdwave.io/api/keys/token \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $BIRDWAVE_API_KEY"

Keep keys in an environment variable, never in a chat, an email, code or a URL. You get an email whenever a key is created, and revoking one stops it at once.

Security

Catalog questions share nothing about you. Signed in, the assistant can read only what you allowed, and it can never write.
The assistant's access is bound to Birdwave's address and expires within the hour; it renews only while the connection exists.
Product text comes from manufacturers' documents. Birdwave asks assistants to treat it as data, but an assistant can be misled by what it reads: check the source of a number before you rely on it.
Never paste a password or a token into a chat. Birdwave never asks for one there.

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