Connect an AI agent with MCP

What this actually does

MCP lets you use MapToPlay by talking to an AI agent such as ChatGPT or Claude. Instead of clicking through the site yourself, you describe what you want — “make me an FS25 map of my village” — and the agent carries out the steps in your MapToPlay account, asking you for the choices it needs as it goes.

You do not need to know what MCP stands for, and you do not need to write any code. The setup is a one-time job: you copy four values out of MapToPlay, paste them into ChatGPT or Claude, approve the connection once, and from then on you just chat.

This is optional, and it is not a separate set of features. Everything the agent can do, you can also do yourself in MapToPlay. If the setup below looks like more trouble than it is worth, you are not missing out on any map capability — only on a different way of driving it.

What MapToPlay provides, and what you bring yourself

This feature joins two separate products that are bought, run, and supported separately: your MapToPlay account, and your AI agent account. Almost every problem people run into is really a question of which of the two is involved, so it is worth being clear about the split before you start.

• MapToPlay provides the connection values, the map actions the agent is allowed to call, and everything that happens inside your projects — map data, Task units, and exports, under your MapToPlay plan.
• You provide the AI agent. A ChatGPT or Claude account is yours to create and pay for, and it is entirely separate from your MapToPlay subscription. MapToPlay does not sell it, include it, or discount it.
• OpenAI and Anthropic decide whether your agent account may add a custom connector at all, and how many. That depends on their plans and their rules, and it can change at any time. Paying for MapToPlay does not unlock it, and MapToPlay has no way to enable it on your behalf.
• Your agent has its own message and usage limits, which have nothing to do with MapToPlay Task units. Running out of one does not affect the other, and the agent side is not visible from MapToPlay.
• What the agent says and decides is its own behaviour, not a MapToPlay feature. MapToPlay controls which actions it may call and what those actions are allowed to do — not how the agent words things, how clever it is, or how often it gets something wrong.

Who to ask when something goes wrong

Because two products are involved, the fastest way to get unstuck is to work out which side the problem is on before asking anyone.

It is an agent problem if the trouble is inside ChatGPT or Claude: the app will not let you add a connector, the option is missing from your settings, it shows an error of its own, or you have used up its messages for the day. None of that is visible from MapToPlay, so take it to the people who run it — the OpenAI connector instructions and Anthropic’s custom connector guide are the right starting points.

It is a MapToPlay problem if Create connection does not work, the connection is refused after you approve it, an action fails inside one of your projects, or a task or export goes wrong. Those are worth reporting, and the more precisely you can say what you clicked and what happened, the faster they get fixed.

What you need before you start

Four things, and the first two are the ones people usually get caught by:

• A MapToPlay account with a confirmed email address.
• A MapToPlay team on an upgraded plan. MCP is not available in Basic.
• A ChatGPT or Claude account that is allowed to add a custom connector.
• About ten minutes, and somewhere safe to paste four values while you move between two browser tabs.

Which team you are in, and what the agent may do

Check which team is selected before you begin, because the connection is tied to it. A subscription that belongs to a different team does not count for this one. Usage and Subscriptions shows you which team you are currently in.

The connection then uses the permissions you already have in that team, and can never exceed them. If you can only view projects, the agent can only view them too — it will not be able to edit, delete, or export on your behalf, no matter how you ask. If something you need turns out to be unavailable, that is usually your role rather than a fault: ask your team owner to change it.

Step 1: copy your connection details from MapToPlay

Sign in to MapToPlay and select the team you want the agent to work in. Open the account menu → Settings → Security, and scroll to MapToPlay MCP at the end of the security controls.

Check that the team name shown is the one you meant, then select Create connection. You will now see four values, each with its own copy button: Name, Server URL, OAuth client ID, and OAuth client secret. Keep this window open — you are about to paste them into another tab.

A team has one connection at a time. If you want to use both ChatGPT and Claude, you do not need two connections: the same client ID and secret work in both. Add them in each app and approve each one separately.

Step 2: add MapToPlay in ChatGPT or Claude

Both apps ask for the same things: a name, the server URL, and — tucked away under an “advanced” heading — the client ID and secret. These apps are updated often, so if a button is not named the way it is named here, follow the official page linked in your step — those are kept current by OpenAI and Anthropic.

In ChatGPT: open Settings → Security and login and turn on Developer mode if it is not on already. Go to ChatGPT Plugins, select New, name it MapToPlay, and paste the Server URL. Choose OAuth, expand Advanced OAuth settings, and paste the client ID and the client secret. Read the notice, accept it if you are happy to go ahead, and select Create. Full steps: OpenAI’s connection instructions.

In Claude: open Settings → Connectors and choose Add custom connector. Name it MapToPlay and paste the Server URL, then open Advanced settings and paste the OAuth client ID and client secret. Select Add. Full steps: Anthropic’s custom connector guide.

The app will then offer Connect, or Sign in with MapToPlay. Follow it and sign in with the same MapToPlay account you used in step 1. You will be shown an approval screen naming the agent, the team, and what it is being allowed to do — read it, then select Allow connection and wait until you are sent back to the app. Stopping at the sign-in screen without approving is the single most common reason a connection does not work.

One last thing that catches people out: start a new chat and switch MapToPlay on in the tools menu. Conversations you already had open will not pick it up.

Step 3: your first conversation

Open a new chat with MapToPlay switched on, and paste something like this: “Use MapToPlay. Check my team, my limits, and my free project slots, then guide me through making a map, asking me for each choice you need until we export it together.” Then tell it the game, the place, and the map size you have in mind. If you would rather start from nothing, ask for a blank project.

Treat it as someone working alongside you rather than a machine you file requests with. Ask it to explain the next step, say when you do not follow something, and go back to an earlier topic whenever you want to. It cannot see your map the way you can, so when something looks wrong on screen, say so — that is the part only you can do.

It will stop and ask before anything that spends Task units or removes something. Read those messages properly rather than approving on reflex: an agent can be confidently wrong, and the decision is yours.

It can also look at the map. Ask it to move the Editor camera and take a look — straight down over an area, framed on an object you point it at, or at an exact position — and it will render that view from your connected Editor tab and see it. That is how you get it to work from what is actually on the ground rather than from map data alone, and it needs the Editor tab open like any other heavy work. Claude can see the frames it takes. ChatGPT does not currently accept images from a connector, so there it receives only a description of the view.

In broad terms it can create projects from a real location or as blanks, fetch and import map data, work with vectors, forests and water, terrain, rasters and paint, markers and object placements, and prepare and start an export. What is genuinely available in your case still depends on the game, the state of the project, your role, and your team limits — so if you want to know, just ask it.

Some things are deliberately left to you: Road Constructor, bridges, advanced railways, custom model uploads, project settings, choosing a custom export template, and publishing. And for some games a finished export still needs work in that game’s own editor afterwards — Exports explains that handover.

When it asks you to open the Editor

Some edits are calculated by your own browser rather than on the server, so for those the agent needs an Editor tab that you have opened and connected. It will hand you a project link: open it, choose Open editor, then open Editor settings and select the small Connect MCP button at the end. Tell the agent the Editor is connected, and it will carry on.

Keep that tab open and the computer awake while it works — you can watch the changes appear as they happen. If you close the tab, the computer sleeps, or the connection drops, the work simply waits for you: nothing is lost, but nothing progresses either. When you come back, select Connect MCP again and ask the agent to check where it got to before you ask it to retry anything.

Use one connected tab per project. If another tab is already holding the connection, close or disconnect that one and wait up to 90 seconds before connecting here. Disconnect MCP ends the connection for that tab; anything already saved stays saved, and History has your undo options.

Keeping it working

Your agent memorises the list of MapToPlay actions at the moment you connect it, and does not check again on its own. New actions are added and improved regularly, so that list quietly goes out of date. Refresh it from time to time — and always when the agent tells you it cannot do something you are fairly sure it should be able to do. That one symptom explains most “it stopped working” reports.

To refresh: in ChatGPT, open the MapToPlay connection under Plugins and select Refresh — see OpenAI’s refresh instructions. In Claude, reconnect the connector in Settings → Connectors. Either way, start a new chat afterwards, because a conversation already in progress keeps the old list. Note that signing in again is not the same thing: Connect and Reconnect deal with your account, refreshing deals with the list of actions.

If the connection itself will not work, go through these in order: check you actually completed Allow connection in MapToPlay instead of stopping after the sign-in screen; check the team has not dropped to Basic; check you are still a member of it with a role that covers what you are asking for; and check the connector holds the current client ID and secret. If you used Replace connection at any point, both values must be updated in the app — updating only one of them looks exactly like a broken connection.

If an Editor action stalls, reload the project, wait for it to finish loading and saving, select Connect MCP again, and ask the agent to check the status of its action. If a task or an export fails, open its details in the project and follow the recovery step shown there. Resist re-sending the same request over and over — ask the agent whether it already succeeded first, because often it did.

Stopping, and what happens if your plan changes

You can withdraw the agent’s access whenever you like with Revoke connection in MapToPlay MCP, and it takes effect immediately. It does not undo edits that were already saved, and it does not cancel tasks or exports that were already started. If you no longer want MapToPlay listed in the agent at all, remove the saved connector on that side too — that part is done in ChatGPT or Claude, not here.

If the team drops to Basic, is deactivated, or you leave it, MCP stops working straight away. An approved connector and an open Editor tab do not keep it alive. Moving subscription benefits to another team does not carry the connection across either: the connected team has to qualify on its own.

To pick things up again later, restore the team’s plan and reconnect when the agent asks you to. To use a different team instead, select that team in MapToPlay Settings and create a connection there. Revoke connection stays available even after access has ended, so you can always tidy up.

Finally, worth saying plainly: connecting is your choice, and it shares real data. Whatever an action returns — your team usage, the contents of your projects — goes to the agent, and from that point it is handled under that company’s terms, not MapToPlay’s. Have a look at OpenAI’s privacy policy or Anthropic’s privacy policy before you connect if that matters to you.