Build a Help Scout support dashboard with Claude

This is an end-to-end example: connect a data source over MCP, generate a dashboard from live numbers, and close the review loop on one link. Total time, start to shared link, is under fifteen minutes. The same shape works for any of the other examples — only the connection step changes.

Here's the finished dashboard, published to a canvas — click any tile or number to leave a comment, exactly as your team would:

The three moving parts

1. The Help Scout MCP server gives Claude read access to your Help Scout account — conversations, inboxes, customers, and the happiness ratings reports — through a controlled set of tools. You approve what it can touch.
2. Claude pulls the numbers and writes a single self-contained HTML dashboard. You iterate on it in the artifact panel until it's right.
3. Drafty turns that HTML into a stable link your team reviews. Comments pin to the exact element; Claude ships the fix to the same URL.

The generation step is fast now. The part this example is really about is the third one — getting the dashboard in front of people without losing their feedback to a screenshot circled in Preview.

Step 1 — Connect the Help Scout MCP server

Help Scout doesn't run its own remote MCP endpoint, but the well-maintained help-scout-mcp-server package wraps the official Help Scout API and runs locally over npx. It authenticates with OAuth2 client credentials — an App ID and App Secret from a Help Scout private app, not your personal password.

First, create the credentials: in Help Scout, go to Your Profile → My Apps → Create My App (a Private App), and request read access to Mailboxes, Conversations, Customers, and Reports. Copy the App ID and App Secret.

In Claude Code:

Then run /mcp inside Claude Code to confirm the server connected and its tools are available.

In Claude Desktop: open Settings → Developer → Edit Config and add the server under mcpServers:

Step 2 — Pull the numbers

Ask Claude in plain language. It uses the MCP server's read tools to query conversations, inboxes, and the happiness reports:

Claude calls Help Scout, returns the figures, and you sanity-check them against the Reports section in Help Scout before going further. This is the moment to catch a wrong assumption — a time range off by a day, a closed inbox still counted, a happiness score over the wrong period — while it's cheap.

Step 3 — Build the dashboard

Once the numbers look right, ask for the artifact:

Claude renders it live in the artifact panel. Iterate in place — you're not regenerating from scratch:

• "Make the happiness score the hero and put conversation volume under it."
• "Add a 7-day conversations-per-day trend line."
• "Color the Not Good ratings red and show the comment inline."

Step 4 — Publish to Drafty for review

A Claude artifact link is a preview, not a stable URL — iterate the artifact and the link you already sent now shows the old version. Ask Claude to publish it to a Drafty canvas instead, so the link you share always stays current:

Claude pushes the dashboard and hands back a drafty.im/canvas/… link that renders on any device. Send it — your team opens it in a browser, no login and no Claude account needed.

Step 5 — The review loop

This is the part that's not obvious until you've done it once.

A reviewer clicks the specific tile, chart, or number they want changed and leaves a pinned comment — "this happiness score looks high, is it only counting the email inbox?" The comment is anchored to that element, not floating in a Slack thread. Claude reads the comments through the CLI, reruns the relevant Help Scout query if needed, and pushes a revised dashboard to the same URL. The reviewer refreshes and sees the change; the thread stays attached to the element.

The mechanic matters because of what it removes. A Slack message about a chart produces "the number on the left looks wrong." A pinned comment on the actual tile produces "this — happiness should exclude the chat inbox." One of those produces a correct revision; the other produces a guess.

Keeping it fresh

An MCP-generated dashboard is a snapshot — it holds the numbers Claude pulled when it built it; it doesn't re-query Help Scout when someone opens the link. For a weekly support review or a board-ready snapshot, that's fine.

To make it a live canvas that always shows today's figures, copy this prompt — Claude sets up the refresh for you and schedules it to run on its own:

The link stays stable while the content updates underneath it — see keeping a canvas updated automatically.

What to watch for

• Read-only, always. A support dashboard needs read access and nothing more. Scope the private app to read scopes only.
• Check the figures before you share. The MCP returns exactly what you ask for — if your happiness query spans the wrong time range or includes a closed inbox, the dashboard will confidently show the wrong number. Reconcile against the Help Scout Reports section once.
• The link is the deliverable, not the artifact. Share the Drafty URL, not the Claude artifact preview — that's the one you can update in place.