Set up the SendWhale MCP server with your AI client

The SendWhale MCP server runs as a local Deno process on your machine. Your AI client launches it directly — there is nothing to deploy or host. Follow the steps below to get the server running and connected to your preferred AI client.

Install Deno

Install Deno on your machine:

# macOS / Linux
curl -fsSL https://deno.land/install.sh | sh

For Windows, follow the instructions at https://deno.land/#installation.Verify your installation by running:

deno --version

Download the SendWhale MCP server

Download the SendWhale MCP server package from SendWhale and extract it to a location on your machine. Note the absolute path to the mcp/ directory — you will need the full path to mcp/stdio.ts when configuring your AI client.

cd /absolute/path/to/mcp

Create an environment file

Create a .env file to hold your credentials. Store this file outside your repository checkout — never commit credentials to source control.

# .env — store outside your checkout
SENDWHALE_SUPABASE_URL=https://your-project.supabase.co
SENDWHALE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY=your_publishable_key
SENDWHALE_ACCESS_TOKEN=your_user_jwt
SENDWHALE_WORKSPACE_ID=your_workspace_id
SENDWHALE_APP_URL=https://www.gosendwhale.com

All five variables are required. The server will log a startup error to stderr if any are missing.

Find your credentials

Locate the values for your environment file in your SendWhale workspace:

SENDWHALE_WORKSPACE_ID — go to workspace Settings → Agent Access to find your workspace ID.
SENDWHALE_ACCESS_TOKEN — this must be your authenticated user JWT obtained from your active SendWhale session. Open your browser’s developer tools while signed in to SendWhale to copy your session token.

SENDWHALE_ACCESS_TOKEN must be a valid user JWT from an active SendWhale session. It is not a brand read key or a service-role key. User JWTs expire when your session ends — you will need to update this value each time your session expires. The MCP server does not automatically refresh tokens.

Configure your MCP client

Below is a Claude Desktop example — adapt the structure to match your client’s config format.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "sendwhale": {
      "command": "deno",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "--allow-net",
        "--allow-env",
        "--allow-read",
        "/absolute/path/to/mcp/stdio.ts"
      ],
      "env": {
        "SENDWHALE_SUPABASE_URL": "https://your-project.supabase.co",
        "SENDWHALE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY": "your_publishable_key",
        "SENDWHALE_ACCESS_TOKEN": "your_user_jwt",
        "SENDWHALE_WORKSPACE_ID": "your_workspace_id",
        "SENDWHALE_APP_URL": "https://www.gosendwhale.com"
      }
    }
  }
}

Use an absolute path to mcp/stdio.ts. Relative paths will fail if your AI client launches the process from a different working directory.

For Cursor, VS Code with the MCP extension, or other clients, refer to that client’s documentation for how to register a stdio MCP server — the command, args, and env fields map directly to the structure above.

Restart your AI client and verify the connection

Restart your AI client after saving the config. Look for “sendwhale” to appear in the client’s list of connected MCP servers or available tools.If the server does not appear, check the client’s MCP logs or stderr output for startup errors. Common causes are a missing or incorrect path to stdio.ts, missing environment variables, or an expired access token. See the Troubleshooting page for a full list of diagnostic steps.

MCP server logs are written to stderr. stdout is reserved exclusively for MCP protocol messages. Do not add any code or tooling that writes to stdout — doing so will corrupt the MCP message stream and cause parsing failures in your AI client.

API & Auth

MCP Server

Set up the SendWhale MCP server with your AI client