Set up Rulebase access

Gets a user from nothing to a working Rulebase connection: an account, the right data region, an MCP connection for reading workspace data from an AI client, and an API key for pushing data in over REST.

The mistake this skill exists to prevent

Rulebase has two credentials and they are not interchangeable.

	MCP server	REST API
What it's for	An AI client reading workspace data	Pushing conversations and work items in
Credential	OAuth browser sign-in, per person	API key, org-wide
Identity	You, with your role and scope	The organization, unattributed
Where configured	Your MCP client config	Your integration's environment

Putting the API key in an MCP client config does not work and never will — the MCP server does not accept API keys. Going the other way, an OAuth session cannot sign a REST call. Most "Rulebase auth is broken" reports are this crossed over.

The 401 body tells you which surface you actually reached:

• {"error":"No token provided"} — you hit the MCP server (mcp.rulebase.co)
• {"error":"Unauthorized"} — you hit the REST API (api.rulebase.co / api2.rulebase.co)

That single distinction resolves most setup confusion, because the hostnames are similar enough to typo and neither error names the other.

Step 0: get a workspace

Rulebase is not self-serve. There is no public sign-up form, and no way to create an organization yourself.

• No workspace yet — start at rulebase.co to request access. A Rulebase-provisioned organization is the prerequisite for everything below; do not send the user hunting for a sign-up page that does not exist.
• Your company already uses Rulebase — you need an invitation, not an account. An admin invites you from Settings → People → Members, choosing your role. You get an email with a join link and appear as Pending until you accept.
• You are the admin doing the inviting — you need an admin role or the manage- invitations permission. Roles are configured under Settings → People → Roles.

If SSO is configured for the organization, sign-in goes through the identity provider and role assignment may be driven by IdP groups rather than by the invite dialog. Ask before hand-assigning roles in that case.

Step 1: find the data region

Everything else depends on this, and it is decided by which host you sign in at — there is no region setting to read, and a user cannot move themselves between regions.

Surface	United States	European Union
App	https://app.rulebase.co	https://eu.app.rulebase.co
MCP	https://mcp.rulebase.co/mcp	https://eu.mcp.rulebase.co/mcp
REST v1	https://api.rulebase.co	https://eu.api.rulebase.co
REST v2	https://api2.rulebase.co	https://eu.api2.rulebase.co

Ask the user which URL they log in at and derive the rest from it. The regions are separate deployments with separate credential stores: an API key issued in the US does not authenticate against EU hosts, and a valid key sent to the wrong region returns exactly the same 401 Unauthorized as a mistyped one. Nothing in the response hints that the host is the problem, which is why this is step 1 and not a troubleshooting footnote.

Step 2: connect the MCP server

The endpoint must include the /mcp path. The bare hostname is not an MCP endpoint, and clients fail against it with an unhelpful transport error.

Claude Code — one command:

claude mcp add --transport http rulebase https://mcp.rulebase.co/mcp

Or in the MCP config file directly:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "rulebase": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://mcp.rulebase.co/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Then authenticate. Claude Code prompts on first connection; if it does not, run /mcp in an interactive session and authorize from there. Note that /mcp is an interactive terminal command — if the current session cannot open that panel, tell the user to run it from an interactive claude terminal rather than trying to authorize programmatically.

Claude Desktop — remote servers are added as custom connectors:

1. Settings → Connectors, or claude.ai/customize/connectors
2. Add custom connector → Web
3. Enter the MCP endpoint for the region from step 1
4. Add, then Connect, and sign in to Rulebase
5. In a chat, + → Connectors and enable Rulebase

Cursor — same shape as Claude Code, in Cursor's MCP settings:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "rulebase": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://mcp.rulebase.co/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Any client implementing remote MCP with OAuth works. The server publishes standard discovery documents, so a compliant client needs no manual OAuth configuration: /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource on the MCP host points at the authorization server, which advertises PKCE (S256), authorization-code, refresh-token and device-code grants, and dynamic client registration. If a client asks for a client ID or secret, it is not using discovery — check for a remote/HTTP transport option before entering anything by hand.

Step 3: verify the MCP connection

Do this before any real work, and do it in this order:

1. get_current_organization — always first. It confirms both that auth succeeded and which tenant you are in. State the organization name back to the user. Every subsequent query is scoped to it, and operating against the wrong workspace is the expensive mistake here.
2. get_workspace_schema — the authoritative list of queryable entities and fields for this workspace. Build queries from what it returns, never from field names remembered from another workspace or from a document.

If tools are absent from the session entirely, the client is not connected — go back to step 2 rather than assuming a permissions problem.

One symptom worth recognising: if organization-scoped tools work but member-identity tools (for example those reading your coaching sessions or saved chat history) fail with a message that the authenticated organization is not available in the workspace, that is a membership-resolution problem on the account, not a client misconfiguration. Reinstalling the connector will not fix it. Report which tools work and which do not, and route the user to Rulebase support.

Step 4: create an API key

Only needed if something is pushing data into Rulebase — conversations from a helpdesk with no native connection, or back-office work items from an internal tool. Reading via MCP needs no key.

1. Go to Settings → Connections (/settings/connections on your region's app host).
2. Open the API keys tab.
3. Click Create API key. There are no options to fill in; the key is generated on click, works immediately, and never expires on its own.
4. Copy it from the API key created dialog.
5. Paste it into a secrets manager or your deployment platform's environment variables, then click Done.

The dialog is the only place the full key is ever shown. There is no reveal action on the list afterwards. The list shows the first 16 characters, which is enough to identify a key for revocation and not enough to authenticate. Production keys are prefixed rk_live_.

If Create API key is greyed out, the account lacks permission to manage integrations.

What a key carries

Understand this before deciding how many to create:

• Organization-wide. It authenticates as the organization, not as the person who created it. Requests are not attributed to that person and are not limited by their role.
• No scopes. No read-only keys, no per-endpoint permissions, no IP allowlists. Every key reaches every endpoint that accepts key auth.
• Region-bound. Each region has its own key store.
• No expiry. Valid until someone deletes it.

Treat it as a shared production credential. One key per integration costs nothing and lets you retire one system later without breaking the others.

Revoking is a delete — there is no disable-and-re-enable, and it takes effect immediately. To rotate rather than retire, create and deploy the replacement first, then delete the old key.

Step 5: verify the key

Authenticate with Authorization: Bearer <key>. Listing conversation uploads is the right first call because it only reads:

curl "https://api2.rulebase.co/conversation_uploads?limit=1" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $RULEBASE_API_KEY"

A working key returns 200 with an envelope even on an organization that has uploaded nothing:

{ "data": [], "meta": { "page": { "next": null, "limit": 1 } } }

Or run the checker, which tests the region, both API versions, and MCP reachability in one pass and prints a JSON summary:

export RULEBASE_API_KEY=...        # never pass the key as an argument
node scripts/verify-access.mjs --region us

It reads the key from the environment only. Passing a credential as a CLI argument puts it in shell history, ps output, and this transcript.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause	Fix
{"error":"Unauthorized"} from REST	Wrong region host, malformed header, or revoked key	Check the eu. prefix first — it is invisible in the response. Then the header (Bearer, one space, key, no trailing newline from a shell variable). Then match the key's first 16 chars against the list in Settings → Connections.
{"error":"No token provided"}	You reached the MCP server, not the REST API	You are using the wrong hostname for what you are doing, or an MCP client has not completed OAuth.
MCP client reports a transport error	Endpoint missing the /mcp path	Append /mcp.
MCP tools absent from the session	Client not connected or not authorized	Re-add the server; authorize via /mcp in an interactive session.
MCP connects, all data is empty	Connected to the wrong tenant	get_current_organization and confirm the name with the user.
Org tools work, member tools fail	Membership not resolvable for the account	Not a client problem. Route to Rulebase support with the tool names.
Key works for one API version, not the other	Almost never the key	The same key authenticates v1 and v2. Re-check the host: v1 is api., v2 is api2..
Create API key greyed out	Missing manage-integrations permission	Ask an admin.

Guardrails

• Never print an API key into chat, a log, a commit, or a transcript. If a key has already been pasted into a conversation, say plainly that it must be treated as leaked, and walk the user through creating a replacement and deleting the old one.
• Never accept a key as a command-line argument in anything you write.
• Confirm the tenant before acting. get_current_organization first, name it back to the user.
• Do not create or delete API keys on the user's behalf through the UI or API. Walk them through it; the key must land in their secret store, not in your context.
• Reading is safe; writing is not. MCP exposes write tools in some workspaces. Do not create, update or delete workspace records while setting up access.

Present results to the user

1. Region, and the app host it was derived from.
2. Organization name, from get_current_organization.
3. What is connected — MCP yes/no, API key verified yes/no. Say which surfaces you actually tested rather than implying both.
4. What is not set up yet, and whether they need it. Most read-only users never need an API key; say so instead of walking them through one.
5. Anything blocked on a permission or an invite, naming who can unblock it.