Clay MCP server

The Clay MCP Server allows you to enhance Claude's capabilities by integrating with the Clay contact management platform. Through this server, Claude can search, retrieve, and manipulate your contact information, helping you manage your professional network more efficiently.

Installation Options

Using Smithery (Recommended)

1. Log into Clay and generate your Clay API key
2. Visit Clay's Smithery page
3. Enter your Clay API key under "Installation"
4. Under Claude > NPM, copy the NPM command and run it in your terminal

Manual Installation

To install manually, you'll need to update Claude's configuration file:

1. Open the Claude Desktop app
2. Go to Preferences > Developer > Edit Config
3. Add the Clay MCP server configuration with your API key:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "clay-mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["@clayhq/clay-mcp@latest"],
      "env": {
        "CLAY_API_KEY": "YOUR_CLAY_API_KEY"
      }
    }
  }
}

Key Features

Contact Management

• Search Contacts: Find people by job title, company, location, or keywords
• View Contact Details: Access comprehensive information for specific contacts
• Add Contacts: Create new entries with name, phone, email, and other details
• Add Notes: Create notes associated with specific contacts

Group Management

• Retrieve Groups: View all your user-defined groups or lists
• Create Groups: Set up new groups to organize your contacts
• Update Groups: Modify group titles or adjust group membership

Interaction Tracking

• Search Interactions: Find past communications based on various criteria
• View Statistics: Get numerical data and percentages related to your contacts
• Retrieve Notes: Access notes created within specific date ranges
• Manage Events: View meetings and events scheduled for specific timeframes

Usage Examples

You can ask Claude to perform various tasks with your Clay contacts:

Finding Contacts

Who in my network works at Google as a Product Manager?

Analyzing Interactions

Who have I emailed the most this year?

Getting Statistics

How many of my contacts are based in New York?

Retrieving Contact Information

Who is John Smith?

Creating New Contacts

Add a new contact named Jane Doe, who is a Designer at Figma.

Adding Notes

Save a note for John Smith: 'Follow up about the Q2 report.'

Managing Groups

Create a group called 'Investors 2025.'
Add Jane Doe and John Smith to the Investors 2025 group.

Retrieving Information

What notes did I take last week?
What meetings do I have scheduled for tomorrow?

Additional Resources

For more information and support, visit the Clay Library.

How to add this MCP server to Cursor

There are two ways to add an MCP server to Cursor. The most common way is to add the server globally in the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file so that it is available in all of your projects.

If you only need the server in a single project, you can add it to the project instead by creating or adding it to the .cursor/mcp.json file.

Adding an MCP server to Cursor globally

To add a global MCP server go to Cursor Settings > MCP and click "Add new global MCP server".

When you click that button the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file will be opened and you can add your server like this:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "cursor-rules-mcp": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "-y",
                "cursor-rules-mcp"
            ]
        }
    }
}

Adding an MCP server to a project

To add an MCP server to a project you can create a new .cursor/mcp.json file or add it to the existing one. This will look exactly the same as the global MCP server example above.

How to use the MCP server

Once the server is installed, you might need to head back to Settings > MCP and click the refresh button.

The Cursor agent will then be able to see the available tools the added MCP server has available and will call them when it needs to.

You can also explictly ask the agent to use the tool by mentioning the tool name and describing what the function does.