Connecting an assistant
Tabula runs an MCP server — an MCP endpoint an AI assistant can connect to. Once it’s connected, you can ask the assistant to work on your music in words: “add a half-time bridge after bar 32”, “write a four-on-the-floor kick under the chorus”, “what key is Reverb & Rain in?”
It edits the real song, through the same path a bandmate’s keystrokes take. Its changes appear live in anyone’s open editor and merge with what they’re typing.
The address
Section titled “The address”https://tabula.nonchord.com/mcpThat’s the whole configuration. There’s no API key to generate, copy, or keep safe.
Connecting
Section titled “Connecting”Claude Code — one command:
claude mcp add --transport http tabula https://tabula.nonchord.com/mcpClaude Desktop — add a custom connector with the same URL.
Anything else — any MCP client that supports remote servers and OAuth will connect by URL the same way.
The first time the assistant reaches for Tabula, a browser window opens and asks you to sign in and approve the connection. That’s it — after that it just works.
What “sign in and approve” means
Section titled “What “sign in and approve” means”The assistant never sees your password, and there’s no key to leak. Signing in tells Tabula that you are granting this client access; Tabula hands it a token, and the assistant uses that token from then on.
The important consequence: the assistant acts as you. It sees the bands you’re in and nothing else, and inside them it can do what your role lets you do. Connect it as a viewer and it can read and comment but not write. Everything it does is attributed to you in the band’s activity feed, the same as if you’d done it yourself.
Your bandmates are told you connected it. Because the assistant reaches every band you’re in, each of those bands gets an activity entry naming the client and saying it can read and edit that band. You can’t see into another member’s account, so this is the only way the rest of a band can know that software they didn’t approve has access to their music — and it’s the same for you when someone else connects one.
Disconnecting
Section titled “Disconnecting”Open your account menu → Connected applications. Every client you’ve connected is listed, and Revoke ends the grant. Connecting again means going through the browser approval again.
One detail worth being precise about, because “revoked” can suggest more than it does: revoking deletes the connection and the tokens behind it, so the client can’t renew its access. An access token it is already holding keeps working until it expires, which is within the hour. In practice that means revoking stops an assistant reaching your music shortly rather than instantly.
Revoking is recorded in the activity feed of every band you’re in, just as connecting was, so the record stays truthful rather than leaving bandmates to assume access that has ended.
If you need it gone now — a lost laptop, a client you no longer trust — revoke, and treat the next hour as the window. Otherwise revoke freely: it costs nothing to reconnect, and it’s the right move when you’re done with a project or trying a client you’re unsure about.
If it won’t connect
Section titled “If it won’t connect”- Check the scheme.
https://, nothttp://. This is the single most common cause. - Check the path. The URL ends in
/mcp. - Check you’re signed in to Tabula in that browser. The approval step is a normal Tabula sign-in; if the magic-link email hasn’t arrived, the assistant will sit there waiting.
- Check the client supports remote MCP servers. Some older clients only support local ones that run on your machine. Tabula’s is remote — there’s nothing to install.
Next: what an assistant can do once it’s connected.