Clay

What a member can do

• Search Clay's database for people and companies.
• Run the Functions a workspace admin has enabled for MCP, such as enrichment workflows.
• Pass search results into a Function, for example find contacts and then enrich them.
• It cannot browse or edit Clay tables.

Each task names the Clay tools it may call. clay on a task means every tool the Clay server offers; a name such as clay.<tool> means that tool alone. A tool the task does not name is refused, whatever the connection allows.

Who connects it

A Clay connection acts as the Clay account that signed in when it was connected. It can do what that account can do, and no more.

Anyone who may change tools in your enterprise can connect Clay for a member or a team. Connecting it for the whole enterprise is for the owner, and the people the owner allows.

A connection can sit on the enterprise, a team, a member, a role or a task, and the one further down replaces the one above: task, then role, then member, then team, then enterprise. A connection on anything but a task also reaches the chat of every member it covers.

What waits for you

In a run, nothing on Clay waits for you unless the task declares a gate on it. To approve each change before it happens, gate the tools that change something on the task. See Gates and tool scopes.

In a chat, a Clay tool that its server does not mark as read-only asks you before it runs, unless you chose Always allow for that member and tool.

Setup

Before you connect

A Clay workspace admin must give each person access and enable Functions for MCP before they can be run. Functions spend Clay credits, up to a monthly limit per person.

Connect it

Clay is an Express tool, so there is no server address, key or app to set up. Work in one browser window throughout: the sign-in returns to the portal in the window you started from.

1. In the portal, open the member's page → Tools. To connect it for a team or the whole enterprise, open Tools in the sidebar.
2. Under Express, find Clay and choose Connect. On the Tools page you are asked who uses it: one member, a team or the whole enterprise.
3. Clay's sign-in opens. Sign in with the account the member should work as, and approve what it asks for.
4. You are back on Tools, and Clay shows as connected.
5. Name the tools on the task, clay for all of them or each by name.
6. Check it. Run a task that reads something from Clay. The run page shows the call and what came back.

You can take the access back at any time: delete the connection on Tools, or remove Zero Human OS from the connected apps in your Clay account.

A first task to try

With Clay connected, give a member a task that uses it. For example:

When I give you a list of company domains, find the head of marketing at each and report their names and roles.

Start this task in the portal. It opens a conversation with your COO with the request written out. Read it, change what you like and send it. The COO asks what it still needs to know, then proposes the task for you to approve: its name, who owns it, its guardrails, the Clay tools it may use and its instructions. Nothing is created until you approve it.