## What is the MCP Server?

The MCP (Model Context Protocol) server lets AI assistants like Claude interact with your Yando boards. You can ask Claude to create boards, add sticky notes, export content, manage projects, and more — all through natural conversation.

For example, you can say "Create a SWOT Analysis board for our product launch" and Claude will create the board with the right template, or "Add a red sticky note about the budget risk" and it will appear on your board in real time.

## Prerequisites

1. A Yando account
2. An API key (see below)
3. An MCP-compatible AI client (Claude Desktop, Claude.ai, or Cursor)

## Step 1: Create an API Key

1. Click your avatar in the top-right corner and go to **Settings**
2. Scroll down to the **API Keys** section
3. Click **Create API Key**
4. Give it a descriptive name (e.g., "Claude Desktop")
5. Copy the key immediately — it is only shown once

Your API key starts with `ynd_` and looks like `ynd_abc123def456...`. Keep it secret — anyone with this key can access your boards.

## Step 2: Connect Your AI Client

Choose the setup that matches your client:

### Claude.ai

Claude.ai connects to the Yando MCP server over the internet using OAuth.

1. Go to **Settings → MCP Servers → Add custom**
2. Name: `Yando`
3. URL: `https://mcp.bigdeez.com/mcp`
4. Leave the OAuth fields blank — Claude.ai discovers them automatically
5. You'll be redirected to a consent page — enter your Yando API key to approve access

### Claude Desktop

Claude Desktop connects to the remote MCP server using your API key directly.

1. Open Claude Desktop settings (gear icon → Developer → Edit Config)
2. Add this to your configuration:

```json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "yando": {
      "url": "https://mcp.bigdeez.com/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer ynd_your_key_here"
      }
    }
  }
}
```

Replace `ynd_your_key_here` with your API key.

3. Restart Claude Desktop

### Cursor

Cursor uses the same configuration as Claude Desktop:

```json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "yando": {
      "url": "https://mcp.bigdeez.com/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer ynd_your_key_here"
      }
    }
  }
}
```

## What Can Claude Do?

Once connected, Claude has access to 47 tools organized into these categories:

### Board Management

- **List your boards** — See all boards you own or have access to, including boards shared with you through a project
- **Create boards** — Create blank boards or use a template (e.g., Business Model Canvas, SWOT Analysis)
- **Update boards** — Change the title or description, or add, move or remove the board from a project (Claude reports how many people gained or lost access)
- **Delete boards** — Remove boards you own

### Working with Objects

- **Add many sticky notes at once** — Fill a whole board in a single step
- **Add a sticky note** — Place a single color-coded note, optionally targeting a zone by name
- **Add text boxes** — Add text boxes for longer content; written into a zone, the text fills it (see below)
- **Tidy zones** — Re-fit the text in some or all zones, e.g. on boards made before zone headers
- **Update objects** — Change text, position, or other properties
- **Delete objects** — Remove objects from a board
- **List objects** — See everything on a board

**Zone-aware placement.** When Claude adds notes to a zone, Yando works out where to put them — you can say "add five ideas to the Strengths zone" and they'll be laid out neatly inside it without overlapping. Claude never needs to know the exact coordinates, or even look up the zone first; the zone's name is enough.

**Writing into a zone.** Ask Claude to "summarise the Problem notes into the Problem zone" and the text fills the zone below its header — the zone's name and prompt stay visible — across its full width, at the largest size that fits. More text in the same zone shares the space at one size. Your sticky notes stay on top of the text; press **H** to hide them and read it. Text you place yourself stays exactly where you put it. To re-fit text on an older board, ask Claude to "tidy the zones" (it re-fits every text box in the zones you name).

**Zone text never spills into other zones.** Claude can see how much room each zone has left, and text that wouldn't fit even at the smallest size is turned down, so Claude writes a tighter summary, moves separate points into sticky notes, or puts long-form writing in a project page instead. Text that arrives some other way — a JSON import, or your own edits — is kept in full but shown cut off at the bottom of the zone with a **+N lines** marker: click the text to read all of it, and exports always include the full text. Editing zone text re-fits the zone when you finish; deleting it closes the gap; dragging it somewhere else makes it ordinary text that stays where you put it.

**Filling a board is one step, not dozens.** Asking Claude to "fill this SWOT board out" sends all the notes together in a single request rather than one per note. A 16-note board takes one step instead of 32. Beyond being much faster, this is what keeps a board-filling session comfortably within the API rate limit (see **Rate Limits** below).

### Sticky Note Colors

Sticky note colors carry meaning. When asking Claude to add notes, you can specify a color:

| Color | Meaning |
|-------|---------|
| Yellow | Ideas and suggestions |
| Green | Decisions and agreements |
| Red | Concerns and blockers |
| Blue | Action items and tasks |
| Purple | Questions and follow-ups |
| Orange | General notes (no meaning in exports) |

### Templates

- **Browse templates** — See built-in templates, your own, and templates shared by others (with who shared them). Creating a board from a shared template automatically uses your own copy
- **Get template details** — View zones, scaffold objects and layout information
- **Create custom templates** — Describe a framework in plain language and Claude will build the template (zones with categories and prompts, shapes)
- **Update templates** — Rename, resize, or edit zones on templates you own. Boards already built from the template keep their notes in the edited zones
- **Clone templates** — Copy a built-in, your own, or a shared template as a starting point
- **Share templates** — Share a template with everyone on this Yando, or stop sharing it (others always use their own copy)
- **Add / update / remove zones** — Modify individual zones without rewriting the whole template
- **Add, update and delete scaffold objects** — Titles, helper text, example notes, shapes, and lines or arrows that appear on every new board from the template; many can be added in one step
- **Validate a draft layout** — Catch overlapping zones, angle wrap-around bugs, coverage gaps, and sizing issues before saving
- **Render a template preview** — Get an image of a draft or saved template — zones and scaffold, drawn the way boards draw them — so Claude can check the layout before you see it

### Template Layout Helpers

These tools compute zone coordinates for common patterns so Claude doesn't have to do the arithmetic:

- **Grid zones** — Even rows × columns with padding
- **Strip zones** — Horizontal or vertical bands
- **Pie zones** — Evenly divided circular wedges
- **Rect-sector zones** — Angular wedges that fill a rectangle (full coverage, no dead corners)
- **Matrix zones** — 2×2 matrices (e.g., Impact/Effort, Eisenhower)

### Export & Import

- **Export to JSON** — Get a structured export of a board's content, including what each zone and note colour means
- **Export to Markdown** — Get a readable text version of a board, with a legend of zone categories and note colours
- **Meeting transcripts to boards** — Paste a transcript (or attach a .vtt / .srt / .txt export) and Claude pulls out the decisions, actions, ideas, concerns and questions as colour-coded sticky notes in the right zones. Claude does the reading; you can also pick the **meeting_transcript_to_board** prompt from the Yando connector

### Board History

- **List snapshots** — See daily snapshots of a board's history
- **View a snapshot** — See the board's full state at a point in time

### Projects & Pages

- **Manage projects** — Create, update, list, and delete projects
- **Manage pages** — Create, update, list, and delete markdown pages within projects

## Building Templates with Claude

You can describe a framework — or share a picture of one — and Claude will turn it into a reusable Yando template. Behind the scenes it:

1. Checks whether an existing template is a close match and, if so, copies and adapts it
2. Lays out the zones using the layout helpers (grids, strips, pies, sectors, 2×2 matrices) — sized by how many sticky notes each zone should hold (four across by three down unless you say otherwise), with the canvas fitted around them — and gives each zone a **category** (what kind of information it holds — it sets the zone's colour) and a **prompt** (the question the zone answers)
3. Validates the layout and renders a preview image to check it before saving
4. Creates the template, then adds titles, section headers, helper text, and lines or arrows in one step
5. Previews the finished template and offers to create a board from it so you can open it

**Good prompts are specific about structure:**

> "Create a Value Proposition Canvas template: on the left, a square split into Products & Services, Gain Creators and Pain Relievers; on the right, a circle split into Gains, Customer Jobs and Pains. Add a bold title and lock it."

> "Make a customer journey template with five stages as columns — Awareness, Consideration, Purchase, Retention, Advocacy — and a dashed arrow running left to right across the top."

> "Here's a photo of the framework from our workshop — recreate it as a template."

> "Share my Value Proposition Canvas template with the team."

**What templates can contain today:**

- Zones shaped as rectangles, circles, pie slices or rectangular sectors
- Text (bold or regular; left, centre or right aligned), sticky notes, rectangles, circles, triangles
- Lines in any direction with optional dashes and arrowheads
- Rotation, transparency, and locked objects that stay in place on new boards

Any rectangle split by lines from its centre to its corners or sides is reproduced **exactly** — for example a square cut by its diagonals into triangles, or the Value Proposition Canvas's Value Map (a triangle on the left, top and bottom regions on the right). Shapes that don't radiate from a centre, such as funnels or trapezoids, are approximated, and Claude can draw the true outline with lines on top. Claude will tell you what it approximated.

**Refining a template** is conversational: "make the title bigger", "rename Pains to Frustrations", "add a helper note in each zone". Editing zones on a template that's already in use keeps existing boards' notes in place; removing a zone moves those notes to *unzoned*, so Claude will check with you first.

## Example Conversations

Here are some things you can ask Claude once the MCP server is connected:

**Creating a board:**
> "Create a new SWOT Analysis board called 'Q3 Product Review'"

**Adding ideas to a specific zone:**
> "Add these as yellow sticky notes to the Strengths zone: faster onboarding, better docs, improved search"

**Filling out a whole board at once:**
> "Fill out this SWOT board for a mid-size UK coffee roastery — four or five points in each quadrant, green for strengths, red for threats"

**Flagging concerns:**
> "Add a red sticky note about the timeline risk for the API migration"

**Building a custom template:**
> "Create a custom template for a RACI chart — four vertical columns for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed"

**Previewing a template:**
> "Show me what my new RACI template looks like before I use it"

**Exporting content:**
> "Export my 'Sprint Planning' board as Markdown"

**Working with projects:**
> "Create a project called 'Product Launch' and add a page with our launch checklist"

**Reviewing history:**
> "Show me the snapshots for the Q2 Review board — what changed last week?"

**Meeting notes:**
> "Here's the transcript of today's planning meeting — put the decisions, actions and open questions on my Sprint Review board"

## Rate Limits

To keep the service responsive for everyone, API access is limited to **100 requests per hour** per account, with separate allowances for creating and deleting boards.

In normal use you will not notice this. Claude batches its work — filling a board sends every note in one request rather than one per note — so a typical "create a board and fill it in" conversation uses around three requests, and you could run dozens of those in an hour.

**If you do hit the limit,** Claude will report an error mentioning rate limiting or a "429" response. The limit resets on a rolling one-hour window, so waiting a few minutes and continuing is usually enough.

**Running demos or a heavy internal integration?** Administrators can lift the rate limit entirely for a specific account. If you regularly hit the limit through legitimate use, contact your Yando administrator rather than working around it.

> **Tip:** If Claude starts adding notes one at a time and runs into the limit, ask it to "add all the notes in one go" — it has a tool for exactly that.

## Security Notes

- Your API key is never stored in plain text — it is securely hashed on the server
- Each API key only grants access to boards you own, boards shared with you, and boards in projects you belong to — with the same view/edit role you'd have in the browser
- Other users' private templates are never visible; name lookups only match built-in templates and your own
- You can revoke an API key at any time from **Settings → API Keys**
- API keys can have an expiration date for extra security
- If you suspect a key has been compromised, revoke it immediately and create a new one

## Troubleshooting

**Claude says it can't find the Yando tools:**
- Make sure your API key is valid (not expired or revoked)
- Restart your AI client after changing the configuration

**"Authentication failed" errors:**
- Verify your API key starts with `ynd_`
- Check that the key hasn't been revoked in Settings → API Keys

**"Rate limit exceeded" or 429 errors:**
- You have made more than 100 API requests in the past hour — see the **Rate Limits** section above
- Wait a few minutes and continue; the limit resets on a rolling window
- If Claude was adding sticky notes one at a time, ask it to add them all in one request instead
- If you hit this regularly through normal use, ask your administrator to exempt your account
- Make sure the MCP server URL is correct

**Objects not appearing on the board:**
- Refresh the board page — objects added via MCP appear in real time via WebSocket, but a refresh ensures everything is synced
- Check that you have editor access to the board

**Claude.ai OAuth consent page not loading:**
- Make sure the MCP server URL is correct and reachable
- Try removing and re-adding the MCP server in Claude.ai settings