Connecting MCP servers
Give flows and automations the tools and resources of any Model Context Protocol server.
The Model Context Protocol is an open standard for exposing tools and documents to AI models. Connecting an MCP server gives your flows and automations everything that server offers, without writing a custom tool for each action.
Connecting a server
Add the server as a connection in your workspace integrations — from the catalog of known servers, or by URL with the credentials it needs. Tool editors also offer a quick way to create a connection where you need it.
Using it
- In flows, the server's tools become available to the assistant like any other tool.
- In automations, an MCP step calls a tool on the server you pick.
Servers with many tools are loaded progressively: the model sees what is available and loads the tools it needs, rather than receiving every definition up front. Resources the server publishes, such as documents, can be pinned into the model's context or loaded on demand.
Smart-MCP
A flow with many tools, Skills and MCP servers pays for all of them on every turn: every definition is in the prompt whether the conversation needs it or not. With Smart-MCP, Jev, Kilevel's System One model, decides on each turn which of them the assistant is told about.
Turn it on in the flow's MCP Servers section, then choose for each attached tool, Skill and MCP server:
- Always: offered on every turn, as without Smart-MCP.
- Smart: offered on the turns where Jev judges it relevant to what was just said. An MCP server set to Smart is routed tool by tool, so a server with forty tools contributes only the few that fit the request.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Sensitivity | Lean, Balanced or Generous: how relevant an item has to be to be offered. |
| New items per turn | The most items Jev adds on one turn (default 8). |
| Keep for turns | How many turns an item stays offered after it was last chosen or used (default 2), so a task that spans several messages keeps its tools. |
| Let the AI ask for what was held back | Adds discover_capabilities: the assistant describes what it needs, and the matching items become available. On chat they can be used in the same reply. |
| If Jev is unavailable | Offer everything (the default), or only the Always items. |
Use Try a message to see what a message would be offered, with each item's relevance score, before you save.
Good to know:
- Smart-MCP routes chat and Work turns. Routing adds roughly a quarter to half a second before the reply. Calls keep their full tool list: a routing step before every spoken reply would cost more latency than it saves.
- Ending, transferring and handing off a session, and the Session State tools, are always offered.
- A Skill keeps its loading mode when it is offered: a Static Skill is included in full, and a Dynamic one appears in the catalog for the assistant to load.
Note
This page is about Kilevel using MCP servers. To use Kilevel from an MCP client, see Kilevel as an MCP server.