Connect Claude Desktop to your company knowledge in 10 minutes
The first time someone on your team connects Claude to the company's own facts, there's a small moment. They ask a normal work question, and the answer comes back using the right product name, in the house tone, respecting a rule nobody typed into the chat. I've now watched that moment land a good number of times, and people do the same thing: they look up from the screen to check if anyone else saw it.
This guide gets you to that moment. Ten minutes, no terminal, no code. I'll use Company Brain as the source of facts, since that's what we make, but the Claude side of the steps is the same for any MCP connection.
A dated honesty note before we start: these steps match Claude Desktop as of August 2026. Settings screens move. If a menu has drifted by the time you read this, the shape of the process holds, and our setup guide inside the product stays current.
Before you start
You need three things. A Claude account, on any plan, since connectors work on Free through Enterprise and Free allows one custom connector at a time. A Company Brain account, where the free plan is fine and stays free. And your first facts written in, because connecting an empty source produces a very polite nothing. If the facts aren't written yet, start with the guide on writing your first 50, then come back. That part is the real work. This part is plumbing.
Step one: copy your company's address
Sign in to Company Brain and open the connection page. You'll find one web address for your company, the MCP endpoint. Copy it. That address is the socket everything plugs into, one per company, the same for every teammate. Your company's key is part of the address, so treat it like a password and share it the way you'd share one.
Step two: add the connector in Claude
Open Claude Desktop, go to settings, and find the connectors section. Choose to add a custom connector, give it a name you'll recognize (Company Brain works), paste the address from step one, and continue.
The second screen asks how the connection authenticates. With a working address it answers itself: Claude tries the server, sees it respond, and sets authentication to None, marked as detected. That's correct. The key inside the address is what authorizes the connection, so there's no separate sign in step, and that key is also why the address needs the same care as a password.
If that screen offers to sign you in instead, the address didn't work. Nine times in ten it's a truncated copy, so go back and check you have the whole thing, key included. Then click Add, open a new chat, and check that the tools icon lists the connector you just named.
That's the whole installation. There's no configuration file to edit and nothing to maintain. If the connector doesn't appear under the tools icon, fully quit Claude Desktop and reopen it, since closing the window isn't the same thing.
Step three: tell Claude when to reach for it
Claude now has the tools. That isn't the same as Claude using them, and this is the step people skip.
Open settings, go to General, and find the field for instructions to Claude. Add a couple of lines telling it what the connection is and when to use it. Something like: you have access to Company Brain, which holds verified facts about the company I work for, so whenever a question touches on the company, look there before answering from general knowledge.
The connection page inside Company Brain shows the exact wording we recommend, and you can paste it straight in. Without this, Claude tends to answer from its own general knowledge and only checks your facts when you explicitly ask it to, which is a quieter failure than a broken connector and easier to miss.
Step four: test it like you mean it
Don't test with "what do you know about my company". Test with real work, because real work is where the difference shows.
Ask for something you'd otherwise have needed to brief: "Draft a short reply to a customer asking about volume pricing." "Write the product description for the site, in our tone." Watch for the product name spelled right, the tone held, the rules respected. If something comes back wrong, that's useful too. It usually means a fact is missing or fuzzy, and now you know which one.
Step five: hand it to the team
Every teammate repeats steps two and three with the same address, a few minutes each. From then on, everyone's Claude works from the same reviewed facts, and when the curator updates a fact, the next conversation everywhere reflects it. No document to circulate, no version 4 to chase.
The connection outlives the setup. Facts change, people join, and the plumbing just sits there doing its job, which is the highest compliment plumbing can get.
Ten minutes. Go collect your moment.