Connect Familiar over MCP.

What MCP is, and why it is the easy path

The Model Context Protocol is an open standard that lets an AI app reach out to an outside tool and use it. Familiar speaks it. Connect your desktop assistant once, and it can read your Foundry world and run the tools Familiar exposes there: roll initiative, look up a stat block, draft a journal, voice an NPC.

The appeal is the bill. The built-in chat path runs on an API key you top up per token. The MCP path runs on the subscription you already hold, so no second invoice arrives and no credits run dry mid-session. You talk to your assistant the way you already do, and your game answers.

Honest about the limit: MCP spends your normal subscription quota. A long, heavy night can still hit your plan's rate limits, the same as any other use of that app.

What you need before you start

Three pieces, and you likely have two of them already.

• Foundry VTT on v13 or later, with a world you run as GM.
• Familiar installed and enabled in that world. If you have not done the install yet, paste the manifest URL into Foundry first; the steps are on the home page.
• A desktop AI app on a plan that supports MCP connectors, such as Claude, ChatGPT, or Codex. The connector feature is what the plan needs to expose, so check yours covers it.

The shape of the connection

The exact clicks shift as each AI app updates its settings, so treat this as the shape of the flow rather than a script. Familiar ships an MCP Setup Wizard that detects your client and generates the config for you, which is the part that saves the fiddly work. The current step-by-step walkthrough lives behind the install link and in the Familiar docs; this guide gets you oriented before you open them.

In broad strokes it goes like this. The middle step is the one the wizard handles, so you are mostly copying and pasting what it gives you rather than writing config by hand.

1. 1

   Add Familiar as a connector

   In your AI app, open where it manages MCP servers and add a new one for Familiar. This is the handshake that lets the app see the tools your Foundry world exposes.

2. 2

   Point it at your world

   Familiar runs a small local server next to Foundry that the connection talks to. The MCP Setup Wizard in the module detects your client and generates the exact config, secret included, so you paste rather than hand-edit. No JSON wrangling.

3. 3

   Authorise and confirm

   Approve the connection when the app asks, then send a simple message to check the link is live. Once your assistant can see the Familiar tools, you're connected and ready to run a session.

The precise menu names and field labels change between app versions, so we send you to the install link, the Discord, and the Familiar docs for the current walkthrough rather than print steps here that could be stale by the time you read them.

How it feels at the table

You talk to your AI app the same way you always have, in plain language. Ask it to set the scene, run the next fight, or remind you what the innkeeper knew. It reads the situation, calls the Familiar tools in Foundry, and the canvas updates: tokens move, conditions apply, the journal opens to the right page.

One thing worth knowing up front. When you ask for voice or a scene change, the audio plays and the canvas changes in your Foundry browser tab, not inside the AI app. The app gets a short text confirmation; Foundry is where the table lives. A handful of in-Foundry chat features, live transcription and auto-pilot among them, stay in the built-in chat window and are not reachable over MCP.

• Combat & AI
• Journals & Notes
• Characters & Items
• Knowledge & Memory

Connect the AI you already pay for

If Familiar is already in your world, the connection is a short job: add it as a connector in your AI app, let the wizard generate the config, authorise the link, and send a test message. From there you run your game from the assistant you know, on the plan you already hold.

Install Familiar in Foundry to get started, and bring the install link or the Familiar docs alongside for the current click-by-click steps. If your AI app connector menu has moved or a paste does not take, the Discord is the fastest place to get unstuck.