ISPBox Wiki

Connect AI to ISPBox (MCP)

Published Aug 10, 2026 · Updated Aug 10, 2026 · 4 min read

Connect Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor to your workspace with the built-in MCP server: per-user sign-in, permission scopes, a full audit trail and admin controls.

The AI Assistant page in ISPBox: the workspace MCP server address with copy button and setup cards for Claude, Claude Code, Cursor and ChatGPT

Every ISPBox workspace ships a built-in MCP server - the open standard (Model Context Protocol) that AI assistants like Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor use to work with external systems. Connect your AI client to your workspace and it can look up customers, diagnose connectivity problems, manage tickets, record payments and pull billing summaries - always limited to the permissions you grant, with every action recorded in the audit log.

1. What your AI can do

The server exposes about 30 tools built around real ISP work, so you can ask things like:

  • "Why is Sarah Coleman offline?" - the AI finds the customer and runs a full diagnosis in one step: billing suspension, RADIUS session, router health, and a plain-language verdict ("the tower is down, 46 other customers affected - not her equipment").
  • "How is the network right now?" - routers online and offline, open incidents, live session counts.
  • "How much is overdue this month?" - collected payments, invoiced totals and overdue balances with counts.
  • "Open a ticket for John about slow evening speeds and assign it to Mike" - the AI creates and updates tickets, replies to threads and adds internal notes.
  • "Record the $45 check he just mailed" - manual payments land in billing exactly as if entered in the panel.

2. Connect from Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or Claude Code

Open My Account > AI Assistant in your panel (every staff member has this page) and copy your workspace server address - it looks like https://yourcompany.ispbox.net/mcp. Then:

  • Claude (claude.ai or the desktop app): Settings > Connectors > Add custom connector, paste the address.
  • ChatGPT: Settings > Connectors > Advanced > Developer mode, add the address as a custom MCP connector.
  • Cursor / VS Code: add the server to your MCP config - the AI Assistant page has a ready-to-copy snippet.
  • Claude Code: claude mcp add ispbox --transport http https://yourcompany.ispbox.net/mcp

The client opens a browser window where you sign in with your normal ISPBox account and approve the connection - no API keys to copy, no passwords typed into the AI.

3. Choosing what the AI may touch

The ISPBox consent screen during AI connection: checkboxes for each permission scope such as clients.read, billing.write and tickets.write, with Deny and Allow access buttons

During sign-in ISPBox shows a consent screen listing permission scopes - clients, billing, tickets, network and so on, split into read and write. Untick anything you do not want the AI to have. Two rules always apply:

  • Only permissions your panel account already has are offered. A technician without billing access can never grant billing access to an AI.
  • The grant follows your account. If your panel permissions are reduced later, the AI connection loses those abilities on its next request - no cleanup needed.

Tools outside the granted scopes are not just blocked - the AI never even sees them. You can revoke a connection anytime from My Account > AI Assistant; the client is signed out immediately.

4. For automations: API keys

Scripts and no-code tools (n8n, Zapier, cron jobs) should not sign in through a browser. For those, create a workspace API key under Settings > API and send it as a Bearer token - the key's scopes decide which tools are available. See the REST API article for key management.

5. Admin controls and the audit trail

The Recent AI activity table for workspace admins: each MCP tool call with when, actor, tool name, OK result and duration in milliseconds

Workspace admins (the settings.manage permission) see an extra section on the AI Assistant page:

  • All connections in the workspace - who connected which AI client, with which scopes, and when it was last used - with the power to revoke any of them.
  • Recent AI activity - the last tool calls with actor, tool, result and duration. Every call is logged, including its arguments.
  • A workspace-wide kill switch that disables the MCP server entirely - every AI connection is rejected until it is turned back on.

Writes made by an AI (a created ticket, a recorded payment) also appear in the regular audit log next to human actions, attributed to the connected user.

6. Built-in guardrails

  • Irreversible billing actions (voiding an invoice, reversing a payment) are marked destructive, so well-behaved AI clients ask you to confirm before executing them.
  • Customer-written text (ticket bodies, notes) is delivered to the AI wrapped in untrusted-content markers, so instructions hidden in a ticket cannot steer your assistant.
  • Rate limits and tenant isolation - the same protections as the REST API apply to every AI call.

7. Availability

The MCP server is included on the Growth and Scale plans (the same entitlement as the REST API). Developers can find the full technical reference - discovery endpoints, auth modes and the complete tool catalog - at ispbox.net/developers/mcp.