Connect Claude or ChatGPT to Shiny Gen

Shiny Gen ships a hosted MCP server at https://mcp.shinygen.ai/mcp. Connect an AI assistant (Claude, ChatGPT, or any MCP client) and it can build, edit, and play-test your Shiny Gen project, live in your browser. There is nothing to install: unlike MCP integrations that bridge to a desktop engine running on your machine, Shiny Gen's server is remote and operates the project in your open browser tab.

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard that lets AI assistants use external tools. Shiny Gen exposes its editors and generation models as MCP tools.

Connect

1. Start hosting in Shiny Gen: open your game at shinygen.ai, open the Agent tab, tap the model name to open the AI model picker, choose Connect external model with MCP, and press Host External Agent. The app shows “Waiting for your AI to connect”. Your assistant cannot connect until you do this, once per session, and the steps for each client appear right there in the app.
2. Claude (web or desktop): add a custom connector in Settings and paste the server URL: https://mcp.shinygen.ai/mcp
3. Claude Code:

   claude mcp add --transport http shinygen https://mcp.shinygen.ai/mcp

4. ChatGPT or any other MCP client: add the same URL wherever your client configures connectors or MCP servers.
5. Approve access: your browser opens a Shiny Gen consent page. Sign in and approve. Authorization uses OAuth, and you can disconnect at any time.
6. Keep Shiny Gen open: the assistant operates your live session, so the app must stay open while it works. Hosting stays open as long as the app is.

Build your own MCP client

You do not need Claude or ChatGPT. Any program that speaks MCP can connect, including an AI agent that writes its own client in code. Everything is standard, so a stock MCP SDK handles it:

• Transport: Streamable HTTP at https://mcp.shinygen.ai/mcp.
• Sign-in: OAuth 2.1 with PKCE (S256). A request without a token gets a 401 whose WWW-Authenticate header points at the discovery document, https://mcp.shinygen.ai/.well-known/oauth-protected-resource.
• Registration: clients register themselves at https://mcp.shinygen.ai/oauth/register. Public clients only: there is no client secret.
• Return address: the redirect URI must be https, or loopback http (127.0.0.1, localhost or [::1]) for a client that catches the redirect on a local port. The authorization code is good for two minutes.
• Approval: the consent page has its own sign-in form, so the browser that approves does not need to run the app.
• Hosting is per account, not per machine: the tab that pressed Host External Agent can be on a different computer from the client. Sign in to the same account in both places.

Sharing: get_share_link returns a link to the game. Who can edit a shared game is set in the app, not through the connector.

If the connection fails

• The assistant says Shiny Gen is not hosting an external agent: press Host External Agent in the app (the first step above), then connect again. If Shiny Gen was closed or lost its connection, hosting stopped with it: press the button again.
• No sign-in window appeared, and the client says the connection failed: your browser is almost certainly blocking the pop-up. Clients open the Shiny Gen sign-in page in a new window, and a blocked pop-up usually surfaces as a generic connection error. Allow pop-ups for your AI client's site and connect again.
• Check the URL includes the path: the server address is https://mcp.shinygen.ai/mcp. The host on its own is not the endpoint.
• The assistant says agent access is switched off: “Allow AI agents to connect” is off for your account. The consent page offers to turn it back on, or turn it on in the app under Agent access & spending.

Permissions

What a connected assistant can do

• Read what is on screen and which document is focused.
• Write or patch the game's GDScript; the game compiles, runs, and reports errors back with line numbers.
• Start a new game for you, list the games in your account, and open any one of them — so you can say “go back to the platformer” and it will.
• Take screenshots to see what you see, including frame bursts to check motion.
• Press keys and actions on the running game to play-test what it built, including whole input timelines when a game needs two controls at once.
• Generate images, 3D models, and audio with Shiny Gen's generation models, browse and restore earlier versions of an asset, and remove an image's background.
• Build and edit 3D models and 2D art as code, and render views of a model to check it.
• Get a share link for the game it has been working on.

What it costs, and the limits

Connecting is free, and writing code is always free — only AI generation spends gems. Two separate limits apply to an assistant working in your project:

• A daily gem cap. Caps how many gems a connected assistant can spend in a single day, so an assistant left running cannot drain your balance. Every paid result reports your gems before, spent, and remaining.
• A weekly action allowance on the free tier. Your first connection starts a 30-day full-connector trial. After that, free accounts get an allowance of assistant actions that change something (writing code, generating, running the game) per week — currently about 10,000, reset weekly. Reading is never limited, and paid members are not subject to this allowance at all. The connector reports your current status and when the allowance resets.

The AI agent built into the app

You do not need an outside assistant at all: Shiny Gen has its own AI agent built into the app, with the same abilities described on this page — it reads your project, writes game code, generates assets, and play-tests what it builds. Connect Claude or ChatGPT when you would rather drive from a tool you already use; otherwise the in-app agent is right there.

Both work the same way where it counts: generation spends gems, and the daily gem cap and the free-tier weekly allowance apply to both. The difference is who runs the model. An outside assistant runs on your own AI plan, so its code editing costs no gems. The built-in agent's model runs on Shiny Gen, so each of its chat steps spends gems; the model picker shows what each model costs.

The docs travel with the connector

Once connected, the assistant automatically receives Shiny Gen's language references and the exact API surface for game code, served through the connector itself. You do not need to teach your assistant anything or paste documentation; it looks up the contract as it works.

Safety

• Permissions are scoped and revocable; disconnect at any time.
• Everything the assistant does happens in your open tab; you watch edits live and can pause or stop it from the app.
• Writing code is free; only AI generation spends gems, with a daily gem cap for connected assistants. Every generation reports your remaining balance.

Questions? See the MCP section of the FAQ or contact support.

Last updated: September 19, 2026