Quickstart

Get Airlock running with Claude Desktop in under 5 minutes.

Prerequisites

• An Airlock account at control-room.air-lock.ai
• Claude Desktop installed
• An API with an OpenAPI specification

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 existing integrations:

• Select from the list of pre-built integrations (Google Calendar, Linear, etc.)
• These come pre-configured with the correct API settings

From 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 operations require approval. To customize which operations need approval:

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 Block (requires approval)
4. For blocked tools, assign approvers (users or groups)

Step 3: Connect Your Account

Your admin configures the API connection details for the server. Once configured, connect your account depending on the server type:

For OAuth-based integrations (Google Calendar, 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:

1. Your admin configures the API connection details
2. Go to your server's detail page
3. 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 all users from my API"

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

Next Steps

• Creating Servers - Detailed server configuration
• Policies - Advanced policy configuration
• Approval Workflows - Configure approvers and notifications