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Using with AI (MCP)

Connect an AI assistant such as Claude or ChatGPT to the CLIKA Platform, and you can ask it about your devices and benchmarks in plain words, or have it start a benchmark and summarize the results for you. The connection uses MCP (Model Context Protocol), the standard way an AI assistant uses tools outside itself. You do not need to know how it works to use it.

Pick your app​

Desktop apps, no terminal needed:

Developer tools:

  • Claude Code: one clika-cli command, or claude mcp add.
  • Codex: one clika-cli command, codex mcp add, or an entry in config.toml.
  • Other clients: any MCP client that connects to a URL.

Each page takes you from nothing to a first answer, and ends with how to remove the connection again.

What you can ask​

Once connected, ask the way you would ask a colleague:

Which of my Clika Platform devices are online?

List the devices that are online, and the benchmark types that can run against Qwen/Qwen2.5-0.5B-Instruct. Then launch an LLM performance run of that model on the fastest online Linux device, wait for it to finish, and summarize tokens per second and time to first token.

The assistant does what the tutorial walks through by hand. A quick LLM Performance run of a small model on a two-core device takes about fifteen minutes, five of them sending the engine to the device, so ask the assistant to check on the run once a minute, and start the first run a minute after the device enrolled.

What it can and cannot do​

The assistant can read your devices and their health, run a command on a device, move files to and from it, browse your models and artifacts, start a benchmark, follow it to the end and read its results.

It can only do what its API key allows, and every request it makes is checked exactly like one from the web application. A key made from the Worker template can look at devices and run benchmarks, but cannot change members or licenses.

Some things stay yours to do, in the web application:

  • Create an API key, or invite or remove a member of the organization.
  • Issue, rotate or revoke a runtime license.
  • Register a new device (Devices, then Register Device), unless the key holds devices:write: see Where the tools stop.

You need an API key​

Every app connects with an API key. Each app's page walks you through making one; in short:

  1. Sign in to the CLIKA Platform and open Settings, then Developer access.
  2. Press Create key. Give it a name that says what will use it (claude-desktop, chatgpt-desktop), choose the Worker template under Start from a template, and press Create.
  3. Copy the key. It is shown only once, and it stops working 90 days after you created it.

Manage members and API keys covers the templates and permissions in full.

For advanced users​

The MCP endpoint and its toolsets​

Each deployment serves MCP over Streamable HTTP at <base-url>/api/mcp, where <base-url> is the address you open in the browser. A toolset is a named selection of the same tools for one kind of work, served at its own path below the endpoint.

EndpointWhat it serves
/api/mcpEvery documented operation outside the platform administration API (/api/admin/**), which no MCP surface serves.
/api/mcp/api-keyThe operations an API key can be granted. Sign-in flows, the capabilities only a browser session can hold (users, roles, SSO, license and billing changes) and multipart-only uploads are served on /api/mcp only.
/api/mcp/device-opsDay-to-day device work: list and inspect devices, read health, run a command, transfer files, browse artifacts.
/api/mcp/benchmark-opsThe benchmark loop end to end: list benchmark types, check compatibility, list and register models, pick devices, launch a run, poll it, read its results and samples.
GET /api/mcp/toolsetsThe toolsets this deployment serves, with a description of each.

A deployment serves a toolset only when its API carries every operation the toolset names. Ask a deployment what it serves:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $CLIKA_API_KEY" https://platform.clika.io/api/mcp/toolsets

A toolset decides which tools are listed. It is not a permission boundary: every call is checked against the key whichever endpoint it arrives on, and each caller's tool list holds the tools its key can call. To limit what an assistant may do, scope its API key.

MCP requests authenticate like REST requests, with Authorization: Bearer <API key>. Do not give an assistant your browser session token: it expires, and it carries all of your permissions.

Where the tools stop​

  • Registering a device takes devices:write, which only an organization owner's or admin's key carries. With it, device-ops and the full endpoint have the two tools: post_enrollment_tokens mints a token (its body needs a name), and get_install with that token and the operating system returns the one-line install command to run on the machine. benchmark-ops has neither.
  • get_jobs_id_benchmark_results_samples carries a sample's index, latency and status; its question and answer text is in get_jobs_id_benchmark_results_io. benchmark-ops serves both. A run with only LLM Performance has no samples, so both answer empty lists for it.
  • A tool call is sent as JSON, so an operation that takes only a multipart/form-data upload cannot be called as a tool; its tool description says so. A file still reaches the platform through the chunked upload session (POST /api/artifacts/uploads with the size and SHA-256, then one base64-encoded chunk per call), through an external source the platform fetches itself (POST /api/artifacts/external), or through a JSON sibling tool that references an artifact already uploaded.
  • A refusal names its reason. A tool outside the key's scope answers that it requires the <capability> capability, which this credential does not hold; one that takes a signed-in session answers that it takes a user session; one outside the toolset you connected names the endpoint that serves it. unknown tool means no tool has that name.

The CLIKA CLI​

The CLIKA CLI serves the same tools over standard input and output with clika-cli mcp, the api-key toolset unless --toolset names another one. clika-cli mcp install writes a client's configuration for you and keeps the API key out of the client's files: the entry names a CLIKA CLI profile, and the CLIKA CLI hands the key to the client when it connects, so a new key needs a new clika-cli login and no change to any client. Get started with the CLI installs the CLIKA CLI, and its installer can register the clients in the same step.