MCP connector
Timbaly exposes an MCP connector at https://timbaly.com/api/mcp. Point Claude or ChatGPT at it and the assistant can read the site, write and publish pages, run the SEO audit and read the analytics — and the reasoning is billed to the flat subscription you already pay for, not to the platform's AI budget.
Page generation is the bulk of a new site's AI cost. If you have Claude or ChatGPT already, this is the cheapest way to build.
Setup
Settings → Agent access. The connector address is https://timbaly.com/api/mcp — the same for every site, because the credential is what identifies which site you are working on.
For a terminal or Claude Code, issue an API key: it begins timbaly_sk_ and is revocable at any time. For Claude or ChatGPT on web, desktop or mobile, use the OAuth consent flow instead — there is no key to paste and nothing to keep in a config file.
ChatGPT accepts a third-party MCP server only with Developer Mode enabled. It lives under Settings → Apps in current versions, and Settings → Connectors → Advanced in older ones. Claude has no equivalent step. If you follow Claude's instructions on ChatGPT you will hit a refusal with no explanation, which is why this is step three rather than a footnote.
“Read my pricing page and tighten the second section.” “Run the SEO audit and show me the actions worth taking.” “Write the four pages in plan 12, in Italian.” It reads the site's knowledge base, its own design rules and the allowed internal links before writing anything.
What it can reach
Not a chat wrapper around a text box. The assistant gets the operations the panel has, so it can do a job end to end rather than draft something for you to paste.
List, read, create from HTML, edit surgically, version and restore, publish and unpublish, manage translations, set SEO fields, Open Graph and structured data.
Navigation and footer per language, head tags, fonts, cookie banner, AI disclosure, variables, knowledge base, redirects, robots.txt and llms.txt.
Create and edit editorial plans, schedule rows, run the site audit, read its findings and apply the proposed corrections one at a time.
Analytics overview, top pages, conversions, contact submissions, Search Console performance and indexing state, PageSpeed reports, IndexNow submission.
List and update media, generate images, delete what is unused. Image generation spends the platform's key rather than your subscription, so it has its own brake.
Find a literal string anywhere on the site — pages, nav, footer, scripts, variables — and replace it everywhere in one operation. This is the tool that makes a phone-number change a single step.
Claude and ChatGPT
| Claude | ChatGPT | |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal / CLI | Yes — API key | Depends on your client |
| Web, desktop, mobile | Yes — OAuth consent | Yes — OAuth consent |
| Extra setting required | None | Developer Mode |
| Server-side difference | None. Both flows are tested end to end: consent, token, tool listing, tool execution, expiry and revocation. | |
The reason for ChatGPT's gate: without Developer Mode it only accepts MCP servers exposing search and fetch tools, which belong to its deep-research flow and have nothing to do with running a website. Adding two fake tools to satisfy a client-side check would not help — Developer Mode would still be needed to use them in a conversation.
The same pipeline
A page written by an external assistant goes through exactly the same publishing pipeline as a page generated inside the panel.
HTML lint for mobile hygiene and the privacy consent checkbox. Internal link sanitisation, so a link to a page that does not exist is neutralised rather than left as a 404 — and reconnected automatically once the target is published. Slug resolution, canonical URL, versioning, and the SEO fields.
It is also marked as AI-generated for EU AI Act art. 50 transparency, with the model that wrote it recorded against the page. That is why the tool requires you to declare which model produced the HTML.
When a page fulfils a row of an editorial plan, the assistant must pass that row's id. Without it the row stays open, the planned navigation and footer links are never applied, and the nightly job eventually regenerates the page as a duplicate. The tool descriptions say so, the handover screen says so, and it is worth knowing before you drive it yourself.
This site was built this way. Every page you are reading was written by an assistant over this connector, which is either reassuring or a warning depending on what you think of the pages.
Questions
Yes. Page generation is most of a new site's AI cost, and over MCP that cost lands on your flat subscription instead of the platform's monthly budget — which is not touched at all. On the free plan, where the budget is $1.50 a month, this is the difference between building a full site and running out.
A client-side gate, not a server difference. Without it ChatGPT insists on MCP servers exposing search and fetch, which are for its research flow. Server-side the two are identical, and both are tested against the real consent, token, listing, execution and revocation flows.
No. Same lint, same link sanitisation, same slug and canonical handling, same versioning, same SEO fields, same AI-generation marker. What the pipeline does.
It is scoped to one site and revocable from the panel at any time. Treat it like any other credential: it grants the site operations listed above, including publishing, so it does not belong in a shared repository.
Yes — each site issues its own key, so one assistant session works on one site with no risk of writing to the wrong one. The agency setup.
Create a free site, issue a key, and point your assistant at it. Nothing to install, and the free plan needs no card.