Connecting an AI Assistant to OuterSignal

OuterSignal turns your Shopify customers into personas: groups of customers who share demographics, location, profession, and buying behavior. The OuterSignal connector lets you ask about those personas and your products in plain language, right inside your AI assistant, without opening a dashboard or exporting a CSV.

It works with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and any other assistant that supports MCP (Model Context Protocol) connectors.

What it does

OuterSignal already builds personas from your real order data. The connector exposes them to your AI assistant so you can interrogate them conversationally.

Ask which personas drive revenue, how demographics split across segments, where your buyers live, or who actually buys a given product, and get straight answers. The same analytics pivot to your catalog, so you can compare products by the audiences behind them.

Every answer comes from OuterSignal’s own analytics. The connection is read-only: nothing in your account can be changed through it, and no individual customer data is returned, only aggregates.

Who can use it

The connector is available on paid OuterSignal plans. On the free tier it will install but show no tools until you upgrade.

Seeing only five tools on a paid plan? Until persona tagging is switched on for your brand, the connection offers the five that work without it: listing your brands, listing your personas, the persona summary, the persona comparison, and the summary export. The per-persona detail tools, the weekly revenue distribution, and all the product tools appear once tagging is on. If that is not what you expect, message us.

How to install

These are the same instructions you will find inside OuterSignal under Settings → Integrations → AI Assistants. Two values do all the work. Paste them wherever your assistant adds a custom MCP connector.


Name	`OuterSignal`
Server URL	`https://app.outersignal.com/api/mcp`

Claude

Claude.ai: Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector → paste the Name and Server URL above. Direct link: https://claude.ai/settings/connectors?modal=add-custom-connector

Claude Desktop: Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector → paste the Name and Remote MCP server URL, then click Add.

Claude Code: run this in your terminal, then approve the sign-in prompt on first use:

claude mcp add --transport http outersignal https://app.outersignal.com/api/mcp

ChatGPT

Settings → Apps → Advanced settings → Create app → paste the Server URL above. (ChatGPT renamed “Connectors” to “Apps” in 2026.) Direct link: https://chatgpt.com/#settings/Apps

Gemini

Extensions → MCP servers → paste the Server URL above.

Any other MCP client

Point the client at these two endpoints. Compatible clients authenticate automatically using OAuth 2.0 with PKCE and Dynamic Client Registration. No API keys or personal tokens are needed.


MCP server	`https://app.outersignal.com/api/mcp`
OAuth discovery	`https://app.outersignal.com/.well-known/oauth-authorization-server`

Signing in

You log in once and approve once.

Connect. Your assistant opens an OuterSignal sign-in page in a secure window.
Log in. Sign in with your normal OuterSignal account. Each person who uses the connector signs in as themselves.
Approve. You will see exactly what access you are granting (read-only persona and product analytics for your account) and approve it. Access is scoped to you and expires on its own. You can see and revoke a connected assistant’s permissions any time under Settings → Integrations → AI Assistants.
Pick a default brand. If you belong to more than one brand, the consent page lists every brand this connection can reach and asks which one to use by default. One connection covers them all. Ask your assistant to list your brands to see them, and name one in a question to switch. Access is re-checked on every request, so a brand you leave disappears immediately.

The tools

Seventeen read-only tools. Twelve cover your personas, four pivot the same analytics to your products, and one lists the brands the connection can answer for. Your assistant picks the right one for your question; you never call them by name.

Persona tools (12)

Tool	What it returns
List personas (`list_active_personas`)	The personas currently assigned to your customers, with names and descriptions.
Persona summary (`get_persona_summary`)	One row per persona: customers, revenue, AOV, lifetime value, plus brand totals to read them against.
Compare personas (`get_persona_comparison`)	Every persona side by side on the headline metrics. Can include or exclude orders by order tag, for example to leave out subscription renewals.
Revenue distribution (`get_revenue_distribution`)	Revenue and orders per persona, week by week.
Persona overview (`get_persona_overview`)	The headline numbers for one persona: customer count, revenue, AOV, LTV.
Demographics (`get_persona_demographics`)	Age, gender, home value, and education for one persona.
Geography (`get_persona_geographic`)	Where a persona’s customers are concentrated, by region.
Professional makeup (`get_persona_professional`)	Job titles, employers, industries, and schools that show up in a persona.
Persona revenue (`get_persona_revenue`)	Revenue, average order value, and lifetime value for a single persona.
Persona radar (`get_persona_radar`)	Five composite scores placing a persona against your own brand average.
Product affinity (`get_persona_products`)	The products a persona buys most, and what sets them apart.
Export summary (`export_persona_summary`)	Every persona’s summary in one structured payload, for a brief or a deck.

Product tools (4)

Tool	What it returns
Browse products (`search_products`)	Search your catalog and see buyer counts, revenue, AOV, and the persona mix per product.
Product detail (`get_product_detail`)	Full analytics for one product: demographics, profession, social DNA, and buying behavior.
Compare products (`compare_products`)	Two or three products side by side, ranked by what most distinguishes their audiences.
What they buy next (`get_product_next_purchases`)	The products buyers of a given item tend to reach for afterwards.

Connection tools (1)

Tool	What it returns
List brands (`list_organizations`)	The brands this connection can reach, and which one it answers for when you do not name one.

Reading the numbers

Every field these tools return is defined in the metric dictionary: the customers it is computed over, whether revenue is before or after tax, how a date range changes it, and what a zero means.

Worth knowing before you compare two figures: a few names appear in more than one tool with different definitions, and adding a date range changes how revenue is measured rather than only narrowing it. Two answers can disagree and both be right.

Your assistant is handed the dictionary when it connects, so the quickest way to check a number is to ask it what that number counts. The full dictionary is in the companion article.

Prompts to start with

“Which of my customer personas drive the most revenue this quarter?”
“Compare my two largest personas: demographics, geography, and what they buy.”
“Where are my highest-value buyers concentrated geographically?”
“What industries and job titles show up most across my personas?”
“Compare my two best-selling products. Who buys each, and how do those audiences differ?”
“Give me a one-paragraph summary of my top persona I can paste into a campaign brief.”

Need help?

Open the messenger in the corner of any page on outersignal.com, or email [email protected], and a real person on our team will help you connect, sign in, or troubleshoot.