Guide

How to install the ctrlsignal MCP (Claude, Cursor, Gemini)

Published May 06, 2026

Wire your AI assistant to ctrlsignal in under two minutes — build pages, publish sites, and triage leads from the chat window.

What the ctrlsignal MCP gives you

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is the standard way modern AI assistants talk to outside tools. Once you connect ctrlsignal to your assistant, the chat window becomes a first-class control surface for your sites — no copy-pasting HTML, no clicking through the portal, no leaving the conversation.

With the ctrlsignal MCP installed, your assistant can:

Build pages — create, read, update, and delete pages on any of your sites.
Publish — push a draft live, and roll back via the version history if it goes sideways.
Sites — list your apps and inspect a site's status, custom domain, and SEO.
Leads — list incoming leads, read a single one, leave a note, change status.
Activity — read recent log events for any site to debug what's happening.

Every call runs as you, scoped to your workspace. The assistant only sees what you'd see if you logged in.

Before you start

You'll need:

A ctrlsignal account (sign up here if you don't have one yet).
An MCP-capable client: Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Gemini CLI, or any other client that speaks MCP over HTTP.
About two minutes.

Step 1: Generate your MCP token

In the portal, go to Settings → Integrations → MCP. Click Generate MCP token. The token is shown once on the page — you can reveal and copy it any time, and rotate it if you suspect a leak.

The token is a bearer credential — anyone holding it can act as you in this workspace until it's rotated. Treat it like a password. If you ever paste it into the wrong place, hit Rotate token and update your client config; the old token stops working immediately.

Step 2: Note the endpoint URL

The same MCP settings page shows your endpoint URL — typically https://ctrlsignal.com/mcp. It speaks JSON-RPC 2.0 over HTTPS, which is what every modern MCP client expects.

Step 3: Connect your assistant

Pick the client you actually use. The setup is one command (or one JSON block) in every case.

Claude Code (CLI)

Claude Code's mcp add command persists the registration in ~/.claude/mcp.json. Run this from anywhere:

claude mcp add --transport http ctrlsignal https://ctrlsignal.com/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer <your-mcp-token>"

Restart any open Claude Code session so it picks up the new server.

Claude Desktop

Open Claude Desktop, then go to Settings → Developer → Edit Config. Add ctrlsignal under mcpServers:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ctrlsignal": {
      "url": "https://ctrlsignal.com/mcp",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer <your-mcp-token>" }
    }
  }
}

Save and restart Claude Desktop. The ctrlsignal tools show up under the MCP tools menu in any conversation.

Cursor

Cursor reads ~/.cursor/mcp.json globally, or .cursor/mcp.json for a single project. The config is identical to Claude Desktop's — same JSON, same fields:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ctrlsignal": {
      "url": "https://ctrlsignal.com/mcp",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer <your-mcp-token>" }
    }
  }
}

Restart Cursor. The tools become available to any agent run inside the editor.

Gemini CLI & other MCP clients

Most clients accept a remote HTTP MCP server with three inputs. For Gemini's CLI (and any other client that's not in the list above), register an HTTP server with:

Server name: ctrlsignal
Transport: HTTP (Streamable)
URL: https://ctrlsignal.com/mcp
Header: Authorization: Bearer <your-mcp-token>

Consult your client's MCP docs for the exact config file or CLI flag — every MCP client we've seen accepts the same three inputs above.

Step 4: Try it from the chat

Once the client picks up the new server, ask it something concrete:

"List my ctrlsignal sites." — confirms the connection.
"Create a landing page for a yoga studio called Glow on my glow-yoga site, then publish it."
"Show me leads from the last 24 hours on my acme site and summarize them."

If the assistant says it doesn't have ctrlsignal tools, the most common cause is that the client didn't restart after editing the config. Quit it fully and reopen.

Skip the blank prompt: use the guided onboarding

The portal includes a short questionnaire (site type, page count, style, palette, references) that generates a paste-ready first prompt for your assistant — wired with the HTML and CSS animation guidance ctrlsignal pages expect. It lives at Settings → MCP → Start onboarding questionnaire. Highly recommended for the first build; after that, you'll have your own rhythm.

Troubleshooting

"Unauthorized" errors: the token was revoked or rotated. Generate a new one at Settings → MCP and update your client config.

The client doesn't see the server: the client wasn't fully restarted. Quit the app (not just close the window) and reopen.

A specific call fails: the MCP endpoint logs every JSON-RPC request. Email [email protected] with the timestamp and we can pull the trace from your account.

Ready to try it? Start building with ctrlsignal →