The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that allows AI models and external applications to securely access real-time, contextual data from connected systems. In the context of Elium, MCP enables a seamless bridge between your knowledge base and AI tools such as ChatGPT or other compliant assistants.

Through MCP, an AI assistant can query your Elium content, for example, to answer user questions, summarize documentation, or provide context-aware support without needing to manually copy or export data. Access is managed via OAuth authentication, ensuring that only authorized users and applications can retrieve information based on their Elium permissions.

Each Elium instance exposes its MCP endpoint at https://your-platform-name.elium.com/services/mcp, which can be used to connect your platform’s knowledge securely to external AI ecosystems.

Once a connection is established, the Elium MCP server exposes three read-only tools that an AI assistant can call to retrieve information from your knowledge base. Every tool runs with the permissions of the authenticated user, so an assistant can only ever access content that user is already allowed to see in Elium.

Performs a semantic (meaning-based) search of the knowledge base from a natural-language question and returns the most relevant articles, ranked by relevance.

This is the tool an assistant uses by default to answer a question. Each result includes the article title, a link to open it, and a matching content snippet — including snippets taken from attached documents when those are the best match.

Runs a more targeted search for when an assistant needs to filter rather than rank by meaning. It supports keyword search (a boolean AND of the supplied terms), filtering by article template, filtering by a date range, and choosing the sort order.

This is useful for requests such as “the most recent articles created from a given template”.

Retrieves the complete content of a single article from its identifier, together with its key attributes. An assistant typically calls this after a search, when it needs more context than a snippet provides.

Note: Very long articles are truncated, in which case the assistant is given a link to read the full version online.

Elium uses the OAuth 2.0 protocol to authenticate and authorize access to the MCP endpoint. OAuth ensures that external applications can only access Elium data on behalf of users who have explicitly granted permission.

There are two ways to configure OAuth authentication for MCP integrations:

Platform administrators can manually create an OAuth client directly in the Elium Admin Panel. (There is a step by step tutorial just below)

Once created, the client credentials (client ID and client secret) can be used to authenticate with the MCP endpoint according to the OAuth 2.0 flow.

This approach gives administrators full control over the client configuration and redirect URLs.

Optionally, Elium supports Dynamic Client Registration (DCR).

When DCR is enabled, external systems can register themselves dynamically as OAuth clients on your instance.

To enable DCR, Elium will request:

Only requests matching the whitelisted redirect URLs are accepted, ensuring that access tokens are issued securely to legitimate applications.

This option is on demand and available through simple request at support@elium.com

While this mechanism is secure under standard use, we recommend only allowing trusted redirect URLs to reduce risks of attacks.

For third-party or experimental integrations, we recommend using manual OAuth client creation for tighter administrative control.

Select your app’s section for detailed setup instructions.