How-to — fix common Affinity MCP issues.
”Access denied” or “unauthorized” when connecting (OAuth)
The most common cause is not on your end:- An admin disabled your client. Check that your AI client is enabled under Affinity → Settings → Affinity MCP, or ask your admin.
- Your plan doesn’t include MCP. MCP requires Scale, Advanced, or Enterprise. Confirm under Settings → Billing.
- Your client doesn’t support OAuth. Copilot and Gemini use an API key instead — see Authentication.
”Authentication failed” / 401 (API key)
- Copy the entire key, including any trailing characters.
- The header must be exactly
Authorization: Bearer <your-key>— one space afterBearer, no quotes, no extra whitespace. - Confirm the key hasn’t been rotated or revoked under Settings → Manage Apps.
Your AI client doesn’t show the Affinity tools
- Restart or refresh the client — some load the tool list only on startup.
- Confirm the connection shows as connected or healthy in the client’s settings (Claude Code:
/mcp; Copilot CLI:/mcp show).
Tool calls return “permission” errors after connecting
Tool calls run with your Affinity permissions. If you can’t do something directly in Affinity, MCP can’t either — ask your admin for access to the relevant list or a role change. (Reminder updates and deletes also require you to be the reminder’s creator or owner.)Meeting tools return an access error
get_meetings and related tools require your org to be onboarded to Affinity’s unified events feature. If you see an access error, contact your Affinity admin or CSM.
Note or file search returns nothing
search_notes and search_files require Deal Assist to be enabled for your org. An empty result can mean there were no matches — or that Deal Assist isn’t enabled. Check with your admin.
Connection drops or times out
- Check your internet connection.
- On a corporate VPN, make sure it allows traffic to Affinity’s API (
api.affinity.co).