Run Customer Studies from Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor

This guide shows how to run synthetic customer Studies directly from Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor without leaving the agent surface. Setup takes about five minutes per agent. Once connected, your agent can create Studies, ask questions, and return findings as part of any workflow.

The Minds MCP server exposes twelve tools covering everything from creating a Mind to running a multi-segment Study and exporting results. Everything below assumes you have a Minds account. Sign up at getminds.ai if you don't.

What You Can Do Once Connected

Your agent gains the ability to:

• Create Minds representing specific customer types
• Combine Minds into Audiences
• Ask a Study any question in natural language
• Run multi-segment comparisons across Minds
• Export results as Markdown, PDF, or JSON
• Pull historical Study analytics

The agent calls these tools in sequence. A typical sequence: an agent receives a brief, creates a Study for the target Audience, runs three research questions, and returns a synthesized summary. Total time, end-to-end, is usually under two minutes.

Setup for Claude Desktop

For the canonical product docs, keep the Minds MCP setup guide open alongside this walkthrough.

Claude Desktop uses the mcp-remote bridge to call the Minds remote server with an API key.

Step 1. Generate a Minds API key in your account settings under API Keys. Keys start with minds_.

Step 2. Open the Claude Desktop config file. On macOS this is at ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json. On Windows it's at %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json.

Step 3. Add the Minds MCP entry under mcpServers:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mindsai": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y", "mcp-remote",
        "https://getminds.ai/mcp",
        "--header",
        "Authorization: Bearer minds_YOUR_API_KEY"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Step 4. Restart Claude Desktop. The Minds tools will appear in the tool picker. Test by asking Claude "list my Minds Studies"; it should call list_studies and return your existing Studies.

Setup for Claude Web

Claude Web uses the remote URL connector with OAuth.

Step 1. In Claude Web, go to Settings → Connectors → Add Custom Connector.

Step 2. Enter the URL https://getminds.ai/mcp and click Connect.

Step 3. You'll be redirected to a Minds login flow. Sign in. The connector activates immediately after.

Step 4. Test by asking Claude to create a Study.

Setup for ChatGPT

ChatGPT uses Connectors with OAuth 2.1 and dynamic client registration.

Step 1. In ChatGPT, go to Settings → Connectors → Create new connector.

Step 2. Enter the URL https://getminds.ai/mcp. ChatGPT handles client registration automatically.

Step 3. Sign in with your Minds account when prompted.

Step 4. In any conversation, enable the Minds connector for that thread. Tools are now available.

Setup for Cursor and VS Code

Cursor and VS Code Copilot both speak MCP natively, with the same mcp-remote bridge as Claude Desktop.

Step 1. Generate a Minds API key.

Step 2. In Cursor, open MCP settings (Settings → MCP) and add a new server with:

• Name: mindsai
• Command: npx
• Args: -y mcp-remote https://getminds.ai/mcp --header "Authorization: Bearer minds_YOUR_API_KEY"

Step 3. Restart Cursor. The tools appear in the agent's tool picker.

VS Code Copilot follows the same pattern via its MCP extension settings.

Running Your First Study

Once connected, the simplest workflow is:

Step 1. Ask the agent: "Create a Study with three Minds representing mid-market B2B SaaS marketing managers in Germany."

The agent calls create_study with the right parameters. It returns a Study ID and confirms creation.

Step 2. Ask: "Ask this Study whether the Audience would pay 200 euros per month for a tool that automates customer interviews."

The agent calls ask_study. The Study responds. The agent summarizes the responses.

Step 3. Ask: "Export this Study session as Markdown."

The agent calls export_study. You get a clean Markdown file with the full session.

You can chain these in a single prompt: "Create a Study of US fintech early adopters, ask the Audience about onboarding friction, and export the result." The agent will run the three tools in sequence.

Available Tools

The Minds MCP server exposes these tools to the agent:

Persona tools. list_minds for listing existing AI personas, create_mind for creating new ones from a description or upload, chat_with_mind for one-on-one conversations, get_mind_status for checking creation progress.

Audience tools. create_audience for combining Minds into an Audience, list_audiences for browsing existing Audiences.

Study tools. create_study for setting up a Study, ask_study for asking the Study a question, list_studies for browsing previous Studies, get_study_status for checking readiness, get_study_analytics for pulling structural data, export_study for output in Markdown, PDF, or JSON.

The agent doesn't need to know these names. It reads the tool descriptions from the MCP handshake and chooses based on the task. You phrase your request naturally and the agent picks the right tool.

Patterns That Work Well

A few patterns we see succeed across teams:

Brief-to-summary in one prompt. Compose the entire research brief, the question, and the desired output format in a single prompt. The agent runs the full sequence.

Iterative messaging tests. Run a Study once with a baseline message, then ask the agent to test variants. The agent reuses the Study and just calls ask_study with new wording.

Comparative Studies. Create two Studies (e.g. early adopters vs late majority) and ask the agent to run the same question across both. The agent compares responses automatically.

Daily checks. Schedule the agent to run a brief daily Study question on a specific topic. The agent posts the result to Slack via a connected Slack MCP.

Auth and Cost

API keys use Bearer auth. Keys are scoped to a single Minds account. Revoke and rotate from your account dashboard.

OAuth flows for ChatGPT and Claude Web use the same backend. Tokens expire and refresh automatically.

Pricing follows the public Minds plans: Free, Premium at 39 EUR/month, Team at 79 EUR per seat per month with a 2-seat minimum, and Enterprise custom pricing. Each tool call counts against the same quota as a manual Study run on the web app. See pricing for details.

Troubleshooting

If tools list but never fire, the most common cause is a client bug rather than a server issue. The Open WebUI integration in particular has known regressions in some versions, and on the Native function-calling path it requires Bearer auth (the upstream model provider cannot complete the OAuth handshake on Minds' behalf). Switch the connector to API key auth, or disable streaming on the model.

If OAuth fails on first connection, the most common cause is a stale connector entry. Delete and re-add. The Minds OAuth handler issues fresh tokens on each registration.

If the agent calls a tool but the result looks empty, check that you have at least one Mind or Study already created in your Minds account. Some tools, like list_studies, return an empty array if you have none.

What's Next

Once your agent is connected, the next step is composing it with other MCP servers. The most common combination is Minds plus an analytics MCP (PostHog or GA4) and a notification MCP (Slack). This lets the agent run a Study, validate the finding against real product data, and report the result to a team channel automatically. The full list of MCP servers worth connecting in 2026 is in our companion post on the best MCP servers for marketing and research agents. For reference, the live Minds MCP tools list shows every tool exposed to connected agents.

If you're new to the category, the definition of agentic market research gives the one-page overview of why agents change the workflow at all.

That's the full agentic research loop. It runs without a human in the middle, takes minutes instead of weeks, and costs a fraction of a traditional study. The setup above is the only thing standing between most marketing and product teams and that workflow.