Socket's MCP server lets you connect AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT to your Socket account. Once connected, your assistant can look up your clients, services, and pricing, work with your leads, and draft proposals for you, all from a chat conversation.
What is MCP?
MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard that lets AI assistants connect to other software.
The Socket MCP is a secure bridge between your AI assistant and Socket. Instead of copying and pasting between the two, your assistant fetches what it needs from Socket directly, with your permission.
What can it do?
Once connected, you can ask your AI assistant to:
Look up a client and the services they have with you
List the services, pricing templates, and hourly rates on your pricing menu
Check the drivers and options available for your services
Draft a proposal from a plain English description, validate it against your pricing menu, and create it in Socket as a draft
Go through your pipeline, open a particular lead, and add a note to it
Open a new lead, creating the client and contact if you haven't got them yet
Log a call, email, meeting or task against a lead, with a due date
See every open follow-up across your whole pipeline and who owns each one
Anything created this way lands in Socket as a draft or a record for you to review. The AI never sends anything to your clients.
Working with your leads
This is where the MCP earns its keep, because it covers the admin that usually gets put off until the end of the day.
Interrogating your pipeline
Ask things like "show me my most recent ten leads", then follow up with "tell me about this one" to get the detail without going hunting for it.
You can be a good deal more specific than that. Your assistant can sort your pipeline by client name, owner, temperature, source, deal value or when a lead was created or last touched, and filter it by owner, temperature, source, and whether a lead is new business or an upsell to an existing client. So "my hottest referrals that haven't moved in a fortnight" is a single question rather than a scroll.
⚠️ Deal value in Socket is an indicative figure based on your lead settings, not a quote. It's there to help you rank your pipeline, so don't repeat it to a client as a price.
Your follow-ups in one place
Ask "what follow-ups are open this week and who owns them" and you'll get every outstanding call, email, meeting and task across the whole pipeline, not just one lead. You can narrow it to a type or a colleague, and sort by what's due first.
It's the Monday morning question that's otherwise a job in itself.
Writing back
Your assistant can also put things into Socket, which is the part that saves the most time.
Adding a note. After a call, "I've just spoken with Sarah at Bakers Ltd and she's still keen, add a note about that to their lead" puts the note on that lead's activity, recorded against your name just as if you'd typed it in yourself.
Logging a follow-up. "Book me a task to call them back on the 12th" creates a call, email, meeting or task against the lead with a due date, so it turns up in your follow-ups rather than living in your head.
Opening a new lead. Describe a new prospect and your assistant can open the lead for you, creating the client record and contact at the same time if you haven't got them already. You can set the deal size, temperature and source as you go, and a referral will ask you who from.
A few things worth knowing
New leads land in your first pipeline stage. You can't ask for a particular stage, which keeps it consistent with every other automatic way a lead arrives. Drag it along the board as normal.
Socket guards against duplicate clients. If the client already exists, by client code, company number, name or alias, it stops and tells you which one rather than creating a second copy. Where the name merely resembles an existing client, it flags the possibilities and asks you to confirm.
A contact needs an email address. Socket won't open a lead against a contact it can't reach, so it asks for one rather than creating a half-usable record.
It'll work out the owner. Leads and follow-ups are assigned using the client's existing owner or manager where there is one, and you otherwise.
Follow-ups are create-only for now. Your assistant can log one but can't tick it off or edit it, so that's still done in Socket.
You can open more than one lead for the same person. Socket won't stop you, because working two opportunities for one contact is perfectly normal.
If you have a CRM connected, such as Karbon or Xero, a client created this way is pushed out to it in the same way as one you'd created yourself. Worth bearing in mind before you let an assistant open leads unsupervised.
See our Leads Module guide for how leads, activities and stages work in Socket.
Before you start
You need a Socket login, and your user must be a team member on the practice you want to connect.
For the leads tools, your practice needs the Leads add-on.
For Claude, you need a paid plan that allows custom connectors.
For ChatGPT, you need a paid plan (Plus, Pro, Business or Enterprise) with Developer mode enabled.
The Socket MCP server address you'll need in all cases is:
You'll also find that address in Socket itself, under Practice Settings > Integrations, with a button to copy it so you don't have to retype it.
Connecting Claude (web or desktop)
In Claude, go to Settings then Connectors.
Click Add custom connector.
Name it Socket and enter the URL: https://app.usesocket.com/mcp/practice
Click Connect. Claude will open the Socket login screen.
Log in to Socket and approve the connection.
The Socket tools will then appear under the connector in Claude's chat composer.
Connecting Claude Code
If you use Claude Code, run this command:
claude mcp add --transport http socket https://app.usesocket.com/mcp/practice
Then type /mcp in your session to trigger the Socket login and approve the connection.
Connecting ChatGPT
Custom connectors in ChatGPT are gated behind Developer mode:
Go to Settings then Connectors then Advanced, and enable Developer mode. On Business or Enterprise plans, a workspace admin needs to enable this.
Go to Settings then Connectors and click Create (or Add custom connector).
Enter the URL https://app.usesocket.com/mcp/practice and choose OAuth as the authentication type.
Complete the Socket login and approve the connection.
Seeing what's connected
Once you've connected an assistant, you can see it listed in Socket under Practice Settings > Integrations, alongside the server address and a link back to this guide.
It's worth a look every now and again, the same way you'd glance down your other integrations. If you see something connected that you don't recognise, or an assistant you've stopped using, you can disconnect it from that assistant's own connector settings.
Deciding what your assistant can do without asking
Most assistants let you set each tool to run freely or to check with you first, and it's worth spending a minute on this when you first connect. It matters more now the assistant can create records rather than just read them.
A sensible starting point is to let the read-only tools run on their own, the ones that look things up, and to require your approval for anything that writes back into Socket, such as opening a lead, logging a follow-up, adding a note or creating a draft proposal. You then get quick answers to questions without anything changing in Socket unless you've said yes to it.
In Claude these settings sit under the connector in Settings then Connectors. Other assistants have their own equivalent.
Is it secure?
Yes. The connection uses OAuth, the same standard used by integrations like Xero. You log in with your own Socket credentials and approve the connection yourself. The assistant can only access practices where you're a team member, and you can revoke access at any time from your assistant's connector settings.
Which AI plan should I use with the Socket MCP connector?
For client data, always use a business or enterprise plan, and if you're on a personal one, check your privacy settings first.
The connector reads real data from your Socket account: client names, fees, contact details, and anything else it can see.
The AI plan you use changes how that data is handled, so check it before you connect.
Personal plans (ChatGPT Free or Plus, Claude Free or Pro) can use your conversations to train the provider's models on default settings, and may keep them longer.
Business and enterprise plans (ChatGPT Business or Enterprise, Claude Team or Enterprise, or API access) keep your data out of training by default, limit retention, and add admin controls.
It is also recommended to include AI use in your data processing terms and policies.
Troubleshooting
I get an error saying the authenticated user has no team member on the practice
The Socket account you logged in with isn't a team member of that practice. If you have more than one Socket login, remove the connector and reconnect with the account you use day to day.
The Socket tools aren't appearing in my AI assistant
Check the connector shows as connected in your assistant's settings. If it does, remove it and set it up again. For Claude, also confirm your plan supports custom connectors.
My assistant says it can't add a note, open a lead or create a draft
Writing back into Socket usually needs your approval the first time. Check your assistant hasn't asked you to authorise the action and been left waiting, and that the tool isn't set to blocked in the connector's settings. For the leads tools, also check your practice has the Leads add-on.
It says the client already exists, but I can't find them
Socket matches on client code, company number, name and aliases, so a client filed under a trading name you don't recognise can still be a match. Search your client list by company number, and if it's genuinely a different business, open the lead from the client record in Socket instead.
Something else not working?
Get in touch with the team via the chat icon in Socket and we'll help you get connected.