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Use MCP to bring in context

This is the first of the two MCP use cases: the chat assistant reads from an external tool and uses what it finds to inform the content it writes. You're drafting something in a Glowtify Epic — an email, a post, an ad — and you want the AI to reference real data from one of your other apps before it generates. Think Stripe MRR numbers in a quarterly recap, an actual customer quote from Intercom in a success story, or the latest release notes from Linear in a launch email.

The published surface is still a native Glowtify channel. MCP just lets the assistant peek at the data it needs while drafting.

When this pays off​

A few concrete scenarios where a context provider earns its keep:

  • Quarterly recap email — pull MRR and top deals from Stripe and HubSpot so the numbers in the email are the real numbers.
  • Customer-success story — quote actual user feedback from Linear or Intercom instead of paraphrasing from memory.
  • LinkedIn announcement — reference real signup counts from your product analytics, not "thousands of users."
  • Product launch email — pull the release notes you wrote in Notion or Linear and have the AI translate them into marketing language.
  • Sales follow-up campaign — check the deal status in your CRM first so the message doesn't contradict where the relationship actually is.

Which apps are good context providers​

The Composio catalog is deep — here are the categories worth thinking about for context flows:

  • CRMs — HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive
  • Project trackers — Linear, Jira, Asana, Trello
  • Docs & knowledge — Notion, Confluence, Google Docs
  • Communication — Slack, Gmail
  • Analytics & billing — Stripe, Mixpanel, PostHog, Google Analytics (via MCP if you want it inside the chat — the native connector is still the right answer for dashboards)

If the data you want lives somewhere not in the list, browse composio.dev/toolkits — there are several hundred more.

Wiring a context provider in 4 steps​

  1. Go to Connectors → MCP tab → browse the catalog or search the app you want.
  2. Click Connect → walk through the Composio OAuth flow → grant read scopes only. Be deliberate here — see the read-only section below.
  3. Open an Epic → start a chat → enable the MCP app in the chat's MCP picker. Up to 3 apps active per conversation.
  4. In your brief or your chat message, ask for the data explicitly. Something like "pull the open deals from HubSpot before drafting" or "check the latest support tickets from Zendesk for the top complaints". Vague briefs get vague tool use.

How the assistant decides to call the tool​

The model uses signals from your brief and the rest of the chat to decide whether to invoke a tool. Specific asks ("fetch the 5 most recent deals from HubSpot") almost always trigger the call. Vague briefs ("write something good about our growth") almost never do — the model doesn't know which tool to reach for.

If you wired the tool up and the assistant didn't use it when you expected it to, rephrase your prompt to call it out explicitly. Capitalization helps: "USE the HubSpot tool to fetch open deals first."

Read-only is your friend​

When you OAuth into Composio, you're choosing what the assistant is allowed to do on your behalf. For context use cases, grant the most restrictive scope that gets the read job done — and nothing more.

tip

Concrete examples: for HubSpot, pick crm.objects.deals.read only. For Notion, grant read-only on the specific database, not the whole workspace. For Gmail, scope to readonly, not modify. If the app surfaces granular scopes, use them.

It's a small habit that prevents a whole class of "wait, why did the assistant just edit that?" incidents.

When NOT to use a context provider​

A few cases where MCP is the wrong tool:

  • The data is already in your Business DNA. Brand voice, ICP, value props — don't re-fetch what Glowtify already knows.
  • The data changes every minute. Generation is async; by the time the post publishes, a live analytics snapshot is stale. Better to write evergreen copy.
  • You only need it once. If this is a one-shot draft, copy-pasting the data straight into the brief is faster than wiring an OAuth.

Common pitfalls​

  • Too many tools enabled. The cap is 3 per chat, but even 3 can confuse the model. Pick the one or two that matter for the current Epic — not "everything I might possibly need."
  • Tool returns too much data. The assistant truncates long responses. Be specific: "the 5 most recent deals" beats "all open deals".
  • OAuth expired. Composio surfaces this in the chat; reconnect from the connectors page and re-run the chat message.
  • Tool not invoked. The model judged your brief didn't call for it. Make the ask explicit — name the tool, name what to fetch.