Skip to main content

Overview

Kardow ships a hosted MCP server that connects your job board to Claude. Once connected, you can manage your board in plain language:
  • “Post this job to my board: https://careers.example.com/jobs/123
  • “List my pending jobs and publish the ones from Acme Corp”
  • “Show me the jobs posted this week with their salaries and share links”
  • “Write a blog post about remote hiring trends, add a cover image, and publish it”
  • “Find my draft pages and publish the About page”
  • “How did my board perform in the last 30 days compared to the previous period?”
Everything runs through your own API key, so Claude can only do what that key is allowed to do, with the same rate limits as the REST API. Content is written as HTML, and images are hosted for you: upload_asset takes any image URL, stores it on your board, and returns a cdn.kardow.com link to use as a cover image or inside the page body.

Prerequisites

  • A Kardow account and job board
  • A Kardow API key (created in Settings > API)
  • Claude (any of: claude.ai on a paid plan, Claude Desktop, or Claude Code)
Your API key is tied to your organization. Keep it private. Anyone with the key, or with a connector URL that contains it, can manage your board.

Step 1: Create an API key

  1. Go to your Kardow Dashboard
  2. Navigate to Settings > API
  3. Click Create API Key
  4. Copy the key. You will paste it into Claude in the next step
Image
Image

Step 2: Connect Claude

The server lives at https://mcp.kardow.com. How you pass your key depends on the app.
claude.ai and Claude Desktop connect via a custom connector. Because these apps cannot send custom headers, your API key goes in the connector URL.
  1. Open Settings > Connectors and click Add custom connector.
Image
  1. Fill in the form:
  • Name: Kardow
  • Remote MCP server URL: https://mcp.kardow.com?key=YOUR_API_KEY
  • Leave OAuth Client ID and OAuth Client Secret blank.
Image
  1. Replace YOUR_API_KEY with the key from Step 1, then click Add.
  2. Start a new chat and confirm the Kardow tools appear in the tools menu.
Image
The connector URL contains your API key. Treat the whole URL as a secret and do not share it.

Step 3: Try it

Start a chat and ask Claude to do something with your board:
Claude will call the tools and report back. On the first tool call, your client may ask you to approve the connector’s actions.

What Claude can do

How Claude places a job

Claude resolves the location before posting, rather than guessing from text:
  1. resolve_location turns "33 Rue des Freres-Moncion, Gatineau" into the Gatineau entity and returns its id
  2. create_job receives that id, so the job lands on the right city page, filter and map
Street addresses are filed under their city on purpose, since that is how candidates browse. The full address stays on the job as its readable location, and its exact coordinates are kept for map pins. create_job reports back what was actually saved for the two fields that are easiest to get wrong:
If the apply line says Kardow-hosted application form when you expected an external destination, or the location says none, ask Claude to fix it with update_job.

Troubleshooting

Open a new chat after adding the connector. Some clients only load connectors for chats started after they were added. Also confirm the connector shows as connected in your settings.
Your key is missing or wrong. Check that the URL ends with ?key=YOUR_API_KEY (claude.ai / Desktop) or that your Authorization: Bearer header is set (Claude Code), and that the key is active in Settings > API.
The API key does not have access to that action for your organization. Regenerate the key or check its scopes in Settings > API. Employer lookups (find_employer), for example, need member read access.

How it works

The MCP server is a thin wrapper around the Kardow REST API. Each tool call is authenticated with your API key and subject to the same permissions and rate limits. Nothing is stored on the MCP server; it forwards requests to api.kardow.com and returns the results to Claude.