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Connect an AI client

Assurance Forge ships a second program, assurance-forge-mcp, which speaks MCP so an AI client you run yourself — Claude Desktop, an IDE assistant, your own script — can read the open case and propose changes to it.

Full reference: MCP Server.

Turn it on

Edit → Preferences → MCP Server → Allow AI clients to read and propose changes. It is off until you turn it on, and every content-bearing tool refuses while it is off. That is the consent gate (ADR 0007), not a misconfiguration.

The same section shows a Client configuration block — the JSON to paste into your client's MCP settings — and a Copy Configuration button. It appears when a project is open and assurance-forge-mcp sits beside the application; otherwise it says which of the two is missing. The configuration it copies names the currently open project.

Granting access

The first time a session touches project content, Assurance Forge raises an AI client access request naming the client and the project, with Allow while open and Deny. Until you answer, the client is refused.

A grant is keyed to that session, survives a reconnect, and ends on deny, revoke, project close or switch, MCP disable, or restart. Nothing is shared before you allow it.

What a client can do

  • Read the case: elements, relationships, terminology, assurance claim points, and where a new argument would belong (suggest_placement).
  • Propose changes. Proposals do not touch the argument: they land in a working draft — one per argument file — with their provenance recorded.
  • Ask for guidance: SCCG authoring doctrine and the mechanical checks are delivered into the session, so a client is told what a good claim looks like before it writes one, and its work is rehearsed against the checks before it submits.

The working draft

Draft changes appear on the canvas as staged nodes with source badges, and in the Draft Changes tab in the feedback dock. Nothing is in your argument until you accept it.

  • Accept changes selectively; the tool keeps dependent changes together, so you cannot accept a child whose parent you rejected.
  • Machine-translated secondary-language text is held for explicit reviewer acceptance (Edit the argument).
  • The accept is recorded as its own audit transaction, and undoing it restores the draft it consumed.
  • A draft survives a restart.

Drafts are a prototype: the design is settled (ADR 0009, ADR 0016) but the format and the UX are still expected to change. Check the matrix rows AF-AI-014 … AF-AI-019 before relying on one.

Data leaves the machine only when you send it

The MCP server is local; your AI client is what talks to a provider. What that client sends is governed by the client, not by Assurance Forge — the consent this application can enforce is whether the client may read the case at all.