Quickstart

Get Airlock running with Claude Desktop in under 5 minutes.

Prerequisites

• An Airlock account at control-room.air-lock.ai
• Claude Desktop (or another MCP-compatible client) installed

Step 1: Create a Server

1. Log in to the Airlock Control Room
2. Navigate to Servers and click Create Server
3. Choose how to create your server:

From a pre-built integration (recommended):

• Select from 18+ integrations: GitHub, Linear, Notion, Google Calendar, Todoist, Sentry, PostHog, HubSpot, and more
• These come pre-configured — no OpenAPI spec needed

From an OpenAPI specification:

• Enter a name for your server
• Paste your OpenAPI specification (YAML or JSON)
• Enter your target API URL

4. Click Create

Step 2: Configure Policies

By default, all tools are set to Allow. To require human approval for specific operations:

1. Go to your server's detail page
2. Find the Tools section showing all available operations
3. For each tool, toggle between Allow (executes immediately) or Require Approval
4. For tools requiring approval, assign approvers (users or groups)

Step 3: Connect Your Account

Connect your credentials depending on the server type:

For OAuth-based integrations (GitHub, Google Calendar, Fathom, etc.):

1. Go to your server's detail page
2. Click Connect to authorize Airlock to access the service
3. Complete the OAuth flow in the popup window

For API key-based integrations (Linear, Notion, Sentry, etc.):

1. Go to your server's detail page
2. Enter your API credentials and click Save

Step 4: Connect Claude Desktop

1. Open Claude Desktop
2. Go to Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector
3. In the Airlock Control Room, go to your server's detail page
4. Copy the MCP URL shown in the connection instructions
5. Paste the URL into Claude Desktop
6. Claude Desktop will automatically authenticate via MCP OAuth

That's it! Claude Desktop is now connected to your API through Airlock.

Step 5: Test It

Ask Claude to interact with your API:

"List my open pull requests on GitHub"

Claude will use the MCP tools exposed by Airlock to call your API.

Next Steps

• Creating Servers - Server types and configuration
• Pre-built Integrations - Full list of available integrations
• Policies - Configure approval rules and conditions
• Approval Workflows - Configure approvers and notifications
• Instructions - Author guidelines and prompts delivered to agents via MCP
• Skills - Create activatable capabilities that bundle instructions and tool references
• Security - Anomaly detection and auto-blocking