Integrations give the AI new tools to work with, such as your analytics, your CMS, or your site. This guide shows you how to connect one, then how to choose what it can do and understand what it exposes: its tools, safety hints, server instructions, and source.
Before you start
- You’re a manager of your team. Connecting integrations is a manager-only setting.
- If the integration uses an API key, have that key from the provider ready.
Connect an integration
- Go to Settings, then Integrations.
- Select Add new integration.
- Choose the integration you want from the list. Ones you’ve already connected are marked Connected.
- Finish connecting. What you do here depends on the integration:
- Sign in with the provider. The integration opens the provider’s sign-in page. Sign in and approve access, and you return to Growth Method, connected.
- Enter an API key. The integration shows its server details and asks for your API key. Paste it, then select Connect.
- No credentials needed. Some integrations connect as soon as you select Connect.
- If the integration offers a choice of what to use, such as which analytics property, you’re asked to select it. Pick what you want the AI to use, then finish.
To connect a remote MCP server that isn’t in the list, select the Add new integration option at the bottom of the list (Connect any other remote MCP server by URL) and enter its name and server URL.
Once connected, the integration appears in your list marked Connected. Select Edit on it, or View on the built-in one, to manage what it can do. The rest of this guide explains what you’ll find there.
Note: to change what an integration is scoped to later, such as which analytics property it uses, disconnect and reconnect it. This is deliberate, so a connected integration’s access can’t be quietly widened.
Tools
Tools are the actions an integration gives the AI, such as reading your analytics, searching your site, or creating a page. Each integration’s panel lists its tools, and you choose which ones the AI can use by switching them on or off.
Next to each tool you’ll see an approximate token cost. Every tool you leave on is added to each chat, so turning off the ones you don’t need keeps chats leaner and cheaper. The built-in Growth Method tools are always on and can’t be switched off.
Tool safety hints
Not every tool is equally safe to run without asking. A tool that only reads data is harmless to run automatically. A tool that changes or deletes something is not.
Growth Method uses each tool’s safety hints to decide:
- Read-only tools run automatically. The AI uses them without interrupting you.
- Everything else asks for approval. If a tool can change or delete something, or doesn’t say what it does, the AI asks you to approve it before it runs.
This matters most for a custom agent running on its own: it will only use a tool unattended when that tool is clearly marked read-only. The panel tells you how many of an integration’s tools declare these hints, so you can see how much an automated agent could do without you.
Server instructions
Some integrations send the AI their own guidance on how to use their tools, written by whoever built the integration. Growth Method shows this to you read-only under Server instructions, so you can see exactly what the integration is telling the AI. If an integration provides none, the panel says so.
Source
Source tells you where an integration and its tools come from: built into Growth Method, a remote service at a web address, or a local server. Use it to check you recognise and trust the provider before you rely on its tools.
How this maps to the MCP standard
Many integrations connect through the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open standard for connecting AI to external tools. The terms above line up with it directly:
- Tools are MCP tools.
- Server instructions are the MCP server’s
instructions. - Tool safety hints are MCP tool annotations. The standard defines four:
readOnlyHint: the tool only reads, and changes nothing.destructiveHint: if the tool does change something, the change may be permanent or irreversible (deleting, rather than adding).idempotentHint: running the same call again has no extra effect.openWorldHint: the tool reaches out to the wider world, like an external web API, rather than staying in a closed, local domain.
Growth Method acts on the first two, read-only and destructive, to decide what runs automatically and what needs your approval. idempotentHint and openWorldHint are part of the standard but don’t currently change how Growth Method behaves.
Some integrations, including the built-in Growth Method tools and certain analytics integrations, use built-in tools rather than MCP. These hints don’t apply to them, and their panel says so.
One important point from the standard: these are hints, not guarantees, and the standard tells apps to treat them as untrusted. That’s why Growth Method errs on the side of caution. If a tool isn’t clearly marked read-only, the AI asks before using it, rather than assuming it’s safe.