# Claude Connectors + n8n MCP Servers = Instant AI Automation ## Metadata - **Published:** 8/9/2025 - **Duration:** 11 minutes - **YouTube URL:** https://youtube.com/watch?v=gp2KsWvOYyc - **Channel:** nerding.io ## Description Join the Community: https://nas.io/vibe-coding-retreat Want hands on training from me checkout https://www.vibecodingretreat.com/ for in person or online jam sessions. In this video, we combine Claude’s new MCP Connectors with n8n MCP servers to create instant AI-powered automations—no custom code required. With this setup, you can: ✅ Plug Claude directly into your existing n8n workflows ✅ Let Claude discover and run your MCP-exposed tools automatically ✅ Build outcome-based agent flows that complete tasks with minimal calls ✅ Trigger workflows in n8n from a simple Claude prompt 🛠 What You’ll Learn: - How Claude Connectors work with remote MCP servers - Exposing specific n8n workflows as tools for Claude - Configuring for Claude Connector integration - Testing end-to-end flows: Claude → MCP Connector → n8n workflow → Result back to Claude 💡 Why This Matters: By linking Claude directly to your n8n MCP server, you give your AI agent superpowers—access to every automation you’ve already built. From sending emails to updating CRMs or fetching live data, Claude becomes the front-end brain for your backend automations. ## Key Highlights ### 1. Claude Connectors & N8N Integration is Simpler Than Expected Connecting Claude connectors to N8N MCP servers is straightforward without authentication. The video demonstrates a basic setup using a production URL. ### 2. Authentication Pitfalls with Claude Connectors & N8N Adding authentication (Bearer token, Header Auth) to the MCP server causes connection failures in Claude due to missing OAuth redirect flows. N8N's standard OAuth doesn't work. ### 3. MCP Remote Authentication & Claude Connector Requirements MCP remotes proxying auth using a website login doesn't align with Claude Connectors' expected authentication specification, leading to connection errors. ### 4. Working OAuth Example: MCP Example Server Using the MCP example server demonstrates a successful OAuth flow with Claude Connectors, utilizing well-known endpoints and proper authorization/authentication flows. ### 5. Leveraging Tools, Resources & Prompts via Claude Connectors Connected Claude Connectors unlock access to tools, resources, and prompts from MCP servers within the Claude interface, enabling powerful AI workflows. ## Summary ## Claude Connectors + n8n MCP Servers = Instant AI Automation - Summary **1. Executive Summary:** This video explores how to integrate Claude's new MCP Connectors with n8n MCP servers to create AI-powered automations without custom coding. The video demonstrates successful integration without authentication, highlights authentication pitfalls, and showcases a working OAuth example for leveraging tools, resources, and prompts. **2. Main Topics Covered:** * **Introduction to Claude Connectors & n8n Integration:** Setting up a basic connection between Claude Connectors and an n8n MCP server. * **Authentication Challenges:** The issues encountered when adding authentication (Bearer Token, Header Auth) to n8n MCP servers and their incompatibility with Claude Connector's expected OAuth redirect flows. * **MCP Remote Authentication limitations:** Why MCP remotes using website login for authentication don't align with Claude Connectors' authentication specifications. * **Working OAuth Example:** Using the MCP example server as a demonstration of a successful OAuth flow with Claude Connectors, using well-known endpoints. * **Leveraging MCP resources and tools:** Accessing tools, resources, and prompts from connected MCP servers within the Claude interface. **3. Key Takeaways:** * Connecting Claude Connectors to n8n MCP servers is straightforward without authentication. * Adding authentication to the n8n MCP server causes connection failures with Claude Connectors due to incompatible OAuth implementations. * Claude Connectors require a specific OAuth flow (using well-known endpoints) for successful authentication. * Using a compatible MCP server (like the example server) allows access to tools, resources, and prompts directly from Claude. * This integration allows Claude to control and interact with automations already built in n8n, granting it "superpowers." **4. Notable Quotes or Examples:** * "It's a lot simpler than you might think... but there are some pitfalls." - Highlighting the ease of basic setup vs. the complexity of authentication. * Mention of specific tools in example "Cascade, Google Docs, Lex" - Illustrating the breadth of possibilities. * "By linking Claude directly to your n8n MCP server, you give your AI agent superpowers—access to every automation you’ve already built." - Underscoring the potential and impact of the integration. **5. Target Audience:** * n8n users looking to integrate AI into their workflows. * Developers interested in using Claude as a front-end interface for their backend automations. * Individuals curious about the potential of AI-powered automation and MCP servers. * Those familiar with concepts like MCP, OAuth, and API integrations. ## Full Transcript Hey everyone, welcome to Nering I.io. I'm JD and today we're going to take a look at continuing the clawed connectors. So we're going to see how we can wire that up to N8. There's a little bit of funkiness when we try and do off and then we're going to try and look at another example so we can kind of understand the spec a little better. With that, let's go ahead and get started. All right, so first I just want to say a huge thank you. This actually uh came from one of you for commenting and saying that you wanted to understand more about how to use cloud connectors and wire it up to any end. So if you haven't already, please watch the other video. I I'll leave it in the tag above, but basically we looked at like how can we wire up Claude connectors to remote MCP servers. So either ones that are affiliated with Claude or specifically ones that uh we built. So now what we're going to do is we're going to take a look at how we can actually connect to these remote servers through the cloud interface with N8N. It's a lot simpler than you might think. Um but there are some pitfalls and so we're going to go through, you know, the good, the bad, and the ugly today. So first, uh let's go over to NEN. And so this is an influencer MCP uh that I made a while ago um where basically you just have a bunch of different MCP servers. It's going out to an embedding for YouTube pulling back the most recent information from different uh influencers. So when you create an NAN trigger server trigger you basically get two different tabs and you can do either one. uh this all the really the only difference is is this test-ash test. So if you want to use the test URL you have to do the execute step so that it's listening and make sure you have the URL copied and then you can actually proceed with the step that we're doing because then it'll actually log the events uh that are coming to this this endpoint. But since this is already production, what we're going to do is we are just going to come over here, click the production tab. You'll notice I don't have authentication on this. We're just going to click the MCP URL. And we're just going to dive right into Claude. So, all we need to do is open Claude, come over here. We're going to go to the settings and we'll go to connectors. So, I already have influencer here. We're going to remove this and we'll put in a new connector. So, I have to do is come down here, put in the name, and we'll say in influencer. And that's really all we need. So, now that we have this, we can actually come into the influencer here, and we're just going to uh have this load, and it should connect for us. So, I'm just going to go ahead and just edit and pull back relevant information. So, we're just going to go out to the Nick Connley uh influencer tool and we're just going to say uh search. It's searching for tools and it's going to come back with a list of tools that Nick Conley has talked about on his content. So, we could also do something uh so you can see has tools like Cascade, Google Docs, Lex. Um, we can even talk about, you know, business ideas. Um, business ideas. So, that's really all you have to do to connect it to the NAN uh uh MCP server, which is one of the reasons that it's great. The tricky part though is when you actually change this to have authentication. So if I put in a barrier token or a header off and I'm I'm just using like a default beer uh beer off credential. This is where it starts to fail. And the reason for this is because it's it doesn't have the the actual O flow that we we need in order to to connect or at least I haven't found a way with any specifically. So, we're going to take this production URL. We're using Greg. We know we have a uh bearer off and we're going to go see what happens. Just decline this. We'll go to settings. We'll come back here. We're remove our uh influencer. As you can see, I've got been doing a lot of testing with cloud connectors. Uh we'll come back here and we're going to go and launch this again. And the and actually one other thing is if you've noticed in the clawed connector when we put it in this time we didn't put it in this time. So let's do that. Influencer real quick. Everyone if you haven't already please remember to like and subscribe. It helps more than you know. Also, if you're interested in hands-on training, please check out Bobcoding Retreat. With that, let's get back to it. So, now that we have this, instead of the configure that we saw before, we have connect. And this is going to go out and call. So, when you look at other ones and you click configure, it'll tell you what tools you have. If you want to ask permission, you can turn them off and on. But now we see connect. And what's happening is it's going out to try and authenticate through that server and be able to pull back the credentials. And what happens is at least with NN and and some of the other like MCP offs that I've seen is this always tends to happen is it goes out to open uh cloud and then it just it's not getting the oath redirect and it fails. So what what's happening here? So when we look at the MCP docs for OH and integrating into cloud code, what's happening is it's proxying through an MCP remote. So you can actually pass the authent authorization and bearer token. What happens with that in an MCP remote is it actually loads a website to force you to log in. That's not necessarily um following the specification that uh Claude specifically when you're doing cloud connectors is looking for. So I'm still trying to figure out a a workaround on this, but I did find an example of what it should look like. So, if you come in here, there's a model context protocol MCP uh example server. You can copy that and we'll go back into cloud. We'll go into settings. And when we go to our connectors, uh I actually have it here. So, what I'm going to do is remove this. And we'll go ahead and add a custom collector or connector, not collector. and we'll just say example server. We'll add. And then what happens is we get this connect again. So this time let's take a look and see what happens with connect. We're still going out but now you can see we have the correct uh authorized response and this is because we're using wellknowns. So in this particular instance, if we look at the documentation for the MCP connect to remote servers, we'll see that there's an entire section on completing the authentication. So it does allow OOTH, it allows API keys, it allows username and combinations, but you have to build that in. So what's happening here is it's going to take us through an authorized flow that claude connectors expect. And right now you can see it's the slash authorized endpoint. It's giving us the client application ID. We're going to continue to authentication. We're now going to a fake upstream off. So we're looking at an upstream authentication. This is just letting us pick an ID or defining what our user identification is so that we can kind of like mock out our our uh authentication completion. Now we're seeing that exact same launch that we're supposed to see. And now we can actually open. So now when we go back in, we're still getting the errors from before. But when we go look at our settings and we look at the claude connector here, we can see that uh our example is where is it? There we go. We can see our example is configured and now we have access to all of these different tools and resources. So, just like we were seeing in the previous video, you don't like this is where I think MCP has huge potential. Not only do you have tools, you have resources that you can pull in, you have prompts that you can pull in and now you can leverage them. So if we go back to a chat or start a new chat and we say use the example actually we don't even need to say use we can add from our example server prompts uh I don't know 95 I'll put style JSON uh we can so it's adding in images we can also add uh I don't know what resourc is, but we'll see what this is. Just a plain text resource. We've added in images. We've added in prompts. And now we can also use our tools as well from the example server. So all these tools are now enabled in our cloud connector. So, in an upcoming video, I'm going to go through how we can actually build all of this out, but I just wanted to show how you can connect to any uh and some of like the authentication flow through an MCP server example. All right, that's it for us today, everyone. So, we went through the cloud connectors and started to look at some of the O pitfalls that we kind of run into as well as the NAN uh connections. With that, happy nerding. --- *Generated for LLM consumption from nerding.io video library*