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integration · published 2026-05-05

Claude Desktop + Arenza MCP — full integration walkthrough (5 minutes, May 2026)

Wire mcp.arenza.ai into Claude Desktop or Claude Code in 5 minutes. After install, ask Claude "how do my brand mentions look in ChatGPT vs Perplexity this week?" and it returns real share-of-voice numbers from the Arenza pipeline — no copy-pasting from a dashboard.

If you spend most of your day in Claude (Claude Desktop or Claude Code inside Cursor / VS Code / iTerm), forcing yourself back to a separate Arenza dashboard tab to check brand visibility is friction. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) lets Claude talk directly to mcp.arenza.ai and pull live data — share of voice, wrong claims, opportunities, prompts — right inside the chat surface you already use.

This walkthrough takes about 5 minutes end to end. If you already have an Arenza account and Claude Desktop installed, skip to "Configure Claude Desktop" below.

What you can ask Claude after the install

  • "What's my brand's share of voice across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, and Grok this week?"
  • "Show me the top 5 wrong claims AI assistants made about my brand last week — verbatim quote, severity, source LLM."
  • "Which competitor is mentioned most often in Perplexity for the keyword \"best CRM for agencies\"?"
  • "Suggest 10 buyer-perspective prompts for our new product line that we should be tracking."
  • "Generate a canonical-fact article body to fix the wrong-claim finding F-2487 in zh."

Prerequisites

  • Claude Desktop (claude.ai/download — macOS or Windows) OR Claude Code (https://claude.com/product/claude-code).
  • An Arenza enterprise account (contact hello@arenza.ai — onboarding includes MCP server access).
  • An Arenza account — on the first call Claude opens a browser to sign in and approve access, so there's no token to copy.

Configure Claude Desktop

Claude Desktop reads its MCP server list from a JSON config file. Open (or create) the file at:

  • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
  • Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

Add the Arenza MCP server entry under "mcpServers":

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "arenza": {
      "url": "https://mcp.arenza.ai/mcp"
    }
  }
}

That's the whole config — just the URL, no token. Save the file. Quit Claude Desktop completely (Cmd+Q on macOS, not just close window) and reopen — the new MCP server only loads on cold start. The first time Claude calls an Arenza tool, a browser window opens to the Arenza sign-in and approve screen; approve once and the connection is remembered.

When Claude Desktop reopens, the bottom of the chat input shows a small "tools" icon. Click it: you should see "arenza" in the dropdown with its tools — list_brands, get_brand_overview, list_prompts, get_brand_corrections, get_brand_verified_info, verify_brand_claim, get_brand_discoverability, score_geo_article, and audit_site.

Configure Claude Code

Claude Code uses a workspace-level .mcp.json file (or your User Settings MCP block). The simplest install:

claude mcp add --transport http arenza https://mcp.arenza.ai/mcp

Or, drop a .mcp.json into your project root for team sharing:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "arenza": {
      "url": "https://mcp.arenza.ai/mcp"
    }
  }
}

No token in the file — nothing to keep out of git. Restart Claude Code and run /mcp in any chat. The first Arenza call opens your browser to approve access; after that "arenza" shows as connected.

Verify with a real prompt

In a fresh chat, paste:

Use the arenza tools to list my brands, then for the first brand call get_brand_overview and tell me the share of voice across every AI platform we track in plain English.

Claude will call list_brands → get_brand_overview, parse the response, and return something like: "Your brand 'Acme Co.' has share of voice 47% in ChatGPT, 22% in Gemini, and 51% in Perplexity. The lowest is Gemini — you're invisible in 78% of Gemini answers about your category."

If you instead see "I cannot connect to the arenza tools" — restart the Claude app and try the prompt again so the browser approve window can open. If it never appears, confirm the URL is exactly https://mcp.arenza.ai/mcp (the /mcp path, not /rpc) and that your browser isn't blocking the pop-up.

Troubleshooting

  • "Tool not found" → the JSON config has a typo. Validate at https://jsonlint.com.
  • "Unauthorized" → your sign-in session expired. Re-run the prompt and approve again in the browser when it opens.
  • "Rate limited" → Free tier is 100 MCP calls/hour. Pro tier is 1,000/hour. See https://arenza.ai/llms.txt for the full ladder.
  • Tool result is empty → the brand has not been scanned yet. From the dashboard, click "Scan now" or wait for the next weekly scheduled scan.
  • Claude Desktop does not show the "arenza" server → you edited the wrong config file. The right path on macOS includes the literal "Application Support" directory name; not "ApplicationSupport".

How the connection is authorized

The setup above uses OAuth 2.0 — the URL is all you paste, and Claude handles the rest: Dynamic Client Registration (DCR) and PKCE mean there's no client_id to provision and no API key to manage. The browser approve screen is the only manual step, and it happens once. Full spec at https://mcp.arenza.ai/.well-known/oauth-authorization-server.

For agencies, each end-user approves their own access, so a junior only ever sees the brands they manage — there's no shared token to leak.

Headless agents, CI, and scripts

When there's no browser to run the approve step — a cron job, a CI pipeline, a server-side agent — use a personal access token instead. Create one at /settings/integrations and send it to the /rpc transport as Authorization: Bearer arn_pat_.... Same tools, no browser handshake.

Companion repo + screenshots

Working config files, the 5 example prompts as separate .md files, and screenshot guidance live in the open-source repo: https://github.com/arenza-ai/arenza-claude-tutorial — clone it, copy the example config, drop in your token, you are running.

Related guides

  • Cursor + Arenza integration: https://arenza.ai/guides/cursor-mcp-arenza-quickstart
  • n8n + Arenza for weekly automation: https://arenza.ai/guides/n8n-geo-automation-weekly-digest
  • Slack alerts when AI misquotes your brand: https://arenza.ai/guides/slack-bot-ai-brand-misquote-alerts
  • Why MCP-native matters for AI visibility tools: https://arenza.ai/guides/mcp-native-ai-visibility-architecture