Agents and MCP clients

Attach brains to an agent, read citations, and ask the brain from MCP clients.

Attach knowledge to an agent

Agent settings > KNOWLEDGE lists what one agent can look up:

• Company Brain: on by default for every agent. Turn it off to keep this agent away from company knowledge.
• Attached brains, each marked “each person’s access” or “shared agent access”.
• Attached collections. A collection attached directly always uses each person’s own access.

Add knowledge attaches a brain or collection. When nothing is offered, admins can create a collection or connect a source, and members can make their own collection in Settings > Knowledge.

Add knowledge on an internal agent: the Company Brain is on, and the menu lists the brains and collections you can attach. Shown with sample data.

On a public agent, visitors have no company login. The Company Brain shows “Off. On a public agent it would be empty for visitors without a company login.”, and brains and collections that use each person’s own access find nothing there. Attach a brain with shared agent access instead. See Whose access it uses.

The Knowledge row on a public agent: the Company Brain is off, and two brains with shared agent access and a collection are attached. Shown with sample data.

How an agent uses the brain

The agent asks all its brains at once: the Company Brain, when on, and the attached brains. It can also ask one brain by name, chosen from the brain’s What it’s for description. An agent can ask only brains attached to it. Live sources are searched in parallel. A source that does not answer in time is left out of that answer and named. When a passage is too short, the agent opens the cited item in full.

Citations in the conversation

An answer that used the brain ends with Sources: numbered chips that match the numbers in the text.

The Sources row under an answer, opened: a stored document with its collection and page, and two live items with their source. Shown with sample data.

• A stored document opens over the answer with the cited passage highlighted. Admins also get Manage in Knowledge.
• A live item opens where it lives, with your own account.

A cited collection document opened from the answer, with the cited passage highlighted. Shown with sample data.

An answer that skipped a source you never connected offers Connect for it.

Ask the brain from an MCP client

MCP clients connected to xpander, such as Claude Code, Claude Desktop, ChatGPT, Codex, Cursor and OpenCode, can ask the same brain. See Connect your MCP client. Every call runs as the person who signed in.

Call	What it does	Inputs
brain_ask	Asks the company’s knowledge and returns ranked passages with citations, or a written, cited answer	question (required), brain: company or the id of a brain, scope: onsite, external or both, mode: passages (default) or answer
brain_read	Opens one cited item in full	citation_id from an earlier answer, or source and ref

An example in Claude Code, once xpander is connected:

Ask the company brain what our refund policy says about annual plans, and cite the sources.

Learned facts are proposed only from agent conversations. MCP clients can ask and read, not propose.