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Connect Zira to Claude
Let Claude read your production data and act in Zira — ask about a line's readings, find a task, or open one — by connecting Zira as a tool.
Connect Zira to Claude and you can ask about your plant in plain language:
Why did the trim saw stall last night? Check its readings around 22:00.
Open a task for maintenance on line 3, high priority, due tomorrow.
Claude reads the data itself and does the work in Zira. You do not paste readings in or copy results out.
This is different from the documentation MCP server, which teaches Claude how Zira works. This one gives Claude access to your Zira data. Most teams want both.
The quick way
Zira can set this up for you. In Zira, click your profile picture in the top right and choose Connect to Claude — or go straight to my.zira.us/connect.
- Choose the site you want Claude to work with.
- Choose whether Claude may make changes, or only read.
- Click Connect to Claude.
- Pick your client, click Copy, and paste what you copied where it tells you.
That is the whole setup.
One connection covers one site. If you look after several sites, come back and connect each one you want Claude to reach — there is no single connection that covers them all.
Everything below is the manual version, for integrators who would rather assemble it themselves.
The manual way
What you need
An API key. It identifies which Zira data the connection can reach, and you can revoke it at any time.
Step 1 — Get an API key
- In Zira, open Channels and go to the relevant channel or company.
- Open the Applications tab.
- Click the add action.
- Name it something you will recognise later — Claude.
- Generate the key and copy it before closing the dialog. It is shown once.
The key can only reach the site and company it was created under. If you want Claude limited to one part of your operation, create the key there.
Step 2 — Add the connection in Claude
Claude Code
claude mcp add --transport http zira https://my.zira.us/api/mcp --header "Authorization: Bearer YOUR-API-KEY"
Clients configured with a JSON file
{
"mcpServers": {
"zira": {
"type": "http",
"url": "https://my.zira.us/api/mcp",
"headers": {
"Authorization": "Bearer YOUR-API-KEY"
}
}
}
}
Replace YOUR-API-KEY with the key from step 1.
Claude Code picks the connection up in your next session. Claude Desktop reads its config file when it starts, so restart it. Other clients vary — reload yours if the tools do not appear.
Step 3 — Try it
Ask something only your Zira data can answer:
List my data sources.
If Claude comes back with your real data sources, you are connected.
Read-only connections
To let Claude look but never change anything, add ?mode=read to the URL:
https://my.zira.us/api/mcp?mode=read
That connection can query readings, data sources, tasks and files, and cannot post, create, or update anything. It is a good default for a first trial, or for anyone who only needs answers.
What Claude can do
Look at things — read a data source and its schema, query and export readings, list and search tasks, fetch a file, get an import URL.
Change things (unless you used ?mode=read) — post readings, create and update tasks, post to a
channel, set a device's status, start a file upload.
The tools that change things are marked as such, so Claude asks before using them. Treat that prompt as a real confirmation: creating a task notifies the assignee, and posting to a channel is visible to everyone following it.
Good to know
- The key is the connection. Anyone holding it has the access it was created with. Store it the way you would a password, and revoke it from the Applications tab if it leaks or if you stop using it.
- Ask for names, not IDs. "The bandsaw in Plant 2" is enough — Claude searches for it and finds the ID itself.
- Narrow your time ranges. "Last night between 21:00 and 23:00" gets a fast, precise answer; "this year" returns far more than Claude can read at once.
- It cannot see everything. The connection covers the data sources, readings, tasks and files the API exposes. Dashboards, forms and vision models are not reachable this way.