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Give Claude Your Own Tools in 5 Minutes

Every Covia venue is an MCP server. Point Claude at one and it immediately gets a working tool belt — a persistent workspace it can read and write, agents it can create and delegate to, assets, and grid operations. No API key needed for anything in this tutorial.

By the end, Claude will be storing data on a venue you control — memory that survives the conversation, lives on your infrastructure, and leaves an auditable record.

Pick your path​

PathClientVenueTime
A — zero installclaude.ai or Claude DesktopPublic test venue~2 min
B — your own venueClaude Code (CLI)Docker on your machine~5 min

Custom connectors in claude.ai and Claude Desktop require a public HTTPS URL, which is why Path A uses a hosted venue. Claude Code connects happily to localhost, which is why Path B pairs it with Docker.

Path A — connect Claude to a live venue (no install)​

  1. In claude.ai go to Settings → Connectors (or in Claude Desktop: Settings → Connectors), and click Add custom connector. (Custom connectors require a Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise plan.)

  2. Paste the test venue's MCP endpoint:

    https://venue-3.covia.ai/mcp

  3. Click Add. That's it — Claude now has the venue's tools.

The test venue is a shared, public sandbox — fine for trying things, not for anything you care about. Path B gives you your own.

Path B — run your own venue and connect Claude Code​

  1. Start a venue (Docker, one line):

    docker run -p 8080:8080 ghcr.io/covia-ai/covia:latest

  2. Tell Claude Code about it:

    claude mcp add --transport http covia http://localhost:8080/mcp

  3. Verify the connection:

    claude mcp list

    You should see covia: http://localhost:8080/mcp (HTTP) - ✓ Connected.

To use Claude Desktop with your own venue, the venue needs a public HTTPS URL — put it behind a tunnel (e.g. ngrok http 8080) or deploy it properly (see the operator guide).

Try it​

Open a conversation and ask:

What tools do you have from covia?

Claude will list around 35 tools — workspace CRUD (covia_read, covia_write, covia_list, …), agent lifecycle (agent_create, agent_request, agent_chat, …), assets, grid operations, and secrets. These are the venue's operations, exposed as snake_case MCP tools.

Now give Claude some memory:

Use covia_write to save my project preferences to w/notes/preferences: I prefer British English, tabs over spaces, and concise commit messages.

Claude calls the tool and the venue answers {"written": true}. Then the payoff — start a brand-new conversation and ask:

Read w/notes/preferences from covia and follow them.

The data is still there. It didn't live in the chat context — it lives in your venue's workspace, on your infrastructure.

What just happened​

Three things worth noticing:

  1. The tools are self-describing operations. Claude discovered them via MCP tools/list — nothing was hard-coded on the client side. Anything you add to the venue (a new adapter, a pinned operation) shows up as a tool automatically.

  2. The same data is reachable over every protocol. What Claude wrote via MCP, you can read via REST:

    curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/api/v1/invoke \
      -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
      -d '{ "operation": "v/ops/covia/read", "input": { "path": "w/notes/preferences" }, "wait": true }'

    One capability, every protocol — that's the grid model.

  3. Every call left a record. Each tool invocation is a job on the venue — who called what, when, with what result. Ask Claude to "list recent jobs with grid_job_status", or browse http://localhost:8080/swagger yourself.

Go further​

  • Have Claude create an agent. Ask: "Use agent_create to create an agent called Scribe with the system prompt 'You summarise documents concisely', then send it a task with agent_request." Claude builds and delegates to a persistent Covia agent — an agent managing agents.
  • Keep the data for real. The default Docker venue stores state in a temporary store. Mount a volume and set store in the config to make it durable — see Persistence.
  • Lock it down. A venue is public by default for easy development. Before exposing one, configure authentication and capabilities.