Tender MCP — Client Installation

Live at https://tender.datatozen.com/install — share that link directly with teammates.

One-page guide for installing the deployed tender MCP server into your local Claude environment. After install, your Claude session gains 14 read/write ops tools wired against tender.datatozen.com.

What you get

The set of targets (the actual machines and databases the tools talk to) varies by deployment. Discover them at runtime by calling inventory.list_targets once you're connected — that's the source of truth for which target IDs are wired up and which tools each one exposes.

Step 0 — get the bearer token

Ask your tender admin via an internal secure channel — 1Password, Bitwarden, Signal, or a direct message inside your team's IM. The token is a 63-character string.

Do not request it over public email, group chats, issue trackers, or any channel where the message persists somewhere indexable.

Once you have it, set it in your shell:

export TENDER_TOKEN='<paste the 63-char token here>'

Step 1 — install

Option A — Claude Code CLI (recommended)

claude mcp add --transport http --scope user tender \
  https://tender.datatozen.com/proxy/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $TENDER_TOKEN"

Verify:

claude mcp list | grep tender
# tender: https://tender.datatozen.com/proxy/mcp (HTTP) - ✓ Connected

If you previously had a local tender MCP, remove it first:

claude mcp remove tender -s user

Option B — Claude Desktop (Mac)

Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tender": {
      "url": "https://tender.datatozen.com/proxy/mcp",
      "type": "http",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer <paste-your-token-here>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop.

Step 2 — smoke test

Direct HTTP probe (proves token + connectivity):

curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $TENDER_TOKEN" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -X POST https://tender.datatozen.com/proxy/mcp \
     -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list"}' \
     | python3 -c "import json,sys; print(len(json.load(sys.stdin)['result']['tools']), 'tools')"
# expect: 14 tools

In Claude (new session), try:

"List the tender targets."

Should invoke mcp__tender__inventory_list_targets and return whatever the gateway has configured.

Step 3 — try real calls

A good first prompt:

"List the tender targets, then describe the schema of every database target you see."

Then explore from there — once you know the target IDs and the schemas, you can ask follow-ups like "tail the application log on host <id>" or "show me the row count of <table> on <id>". The gateway discloses what's reachable; ask your admin which sources are intended for which audiences.

For write tools (server.restart_service, db.apply_migration), the gateway returns approval_pending and emits an SSE event on /events. A human must approve before the action runs.

Troubleshooting

Security notes

• The token is a credential. Treat it like an SSH key — don't paste it into chat, don't commit to git, don't share over email.
• Token rotation: when the admin rotates the bearer, every client must re-install with the new token. No staggered rotation in current design.
• All tool calls are audited. SHA256 hash chain on the gateway side — tamper-evident. Admin can verify the chain status at any time.
• Write tools require human approval. No control plane can unilaterally restart services or run DDL.
• Read-only tools are still scoped. server.read_file rejects anything outside the path allowlist (/var/log/, /etc/, /proc/, /sys/, /run/log/, /usr/share/). db.query rejects anything that isn't SELECT (parser AST, not regex — WITH … DELETE and EXPLAIN ANALYZE INSERT are caught).