How to Connect Manychat to Gemini via MCP

💡 No install? Use cloud.anythingmcp.com directly. Sign in, click Connectors → Manychat, paste your credentials, mint an MCP API key and you're done. No Docker, no git clone, no local server.

Manychat + Gemini

Let your AI work with a Manychat account on Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Telegram: find contacts and read their tags and fields, tag contacts, update fields and contact details, list flows and growth tools, and send messages or start flows with your confirmation.

Prerequisites

See the full setup instructions baked into the connector (visible in the in-app store when you select the connector). The required environment variables for this connector are:

MANYCHAT_API_KEY

Step 1 — Get credentials

Setting up takes about 2 minutes. You need a Manychat account on the Pro plan or higher: the free and Essential plans have no API key.

1. In Manychat, open the account you want to connect (your Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger or Telegram bot).
2. Go to Settings → API and click Generate your API Key.
3. Copy the whole key into MANYCHAT_API_KEY. It looks like 1234567:0123456789abcdef...: the page id, a colon and a hash. Do not add the word Bearer.
4. Install the connector and run manychat_get_account: it shows the account the key belongs to and whether it is on Pro.

One key, one account: a key covers one Manychat account. If you run several, for example your brand's Instagram and a client's WhatsApp, install the connector once per account. Regenerating or deleting the key in Manychat stops the connector until you paste the new one.

What it reads: the account itself; your tags, contact fields and bot fields; your flows (automations) with their folders; your growth tools such as ref links, QR codes and comment triggers; and contacts with their channels, opt-ins, subscription state, last interaction, tags and field values.

Finding contacts: the Manychat API has no list of all contacts. The AI finds a contact by full name, by email or phone number, or by the value of a text or number contact field (up to 100 results), and then reads the one you mean. "The contact with the email [email protected]" works; "everyone tagged VIP" is not something it can list.

Asks before every change: tagging and untagging, setting contact or bot fields, creating or updating a contact, and creating a tag or a field all change your account, and a new tag or field value can start automations that listen for it. The AI shows you the contact and the exact change and waits for your yes. Creating contacts through the API is an import feature of paid plans.

Sending messages: manychat_send_text_message, manychat_send_content and manychat_send_flow send real messages to a real person. Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp only allow automated messages within 24 hours of the contact's last message. Outside that window, WhatsApp needs a flow that starts with an approved template. Before every send the AI shows you the recipient and the exact text or flow.

Switched off at install: manychat_delete_tag. It removes the tag from the account and from every contact that has it, and cannot be undone. An administrator can turn it on deliberately.

Limits: Manychat limits each account, for example to 10 requests a second for contact lookups and changes, and to 100 flow starts an hour for one contact. It can stop serving an account that keeps going over, so the AI works contact by contact instead of looping over hundreds.

Common errors: 401 "Wrong token" means the key is wrong, incomplete or was regenerated. Code 3011 means the contact is outside the 24-hour window. Codes 3040 to 3049 mean the content is not supported on that contact's channel.

The connector does not list all contacts, delete contacts or fields, take part in live chat, reply to comments, or handle payments.

Step 2 — Install the adapter

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/HelpCode-ai/anythingmcp/main/docker-compose.quickstart.yml -o docker-compose.yml
printf 'JWT_SECRET=%s\nENCRYPTION_KEY=%s\n' "$(openssl rand -hex 32)" "$(openssl rand -hex 32)" > .env
docker compose up -d

Step 3 — Add the connector in Gemini

Your server URL: in AnythingMCP, open MCP Servers → the server this connector is on, and copy its URL (https://cloud.anythingmcp.com/mcp/…). Use it wherever this guide shows YOUR_SERVER_ID.

Gemini CLI reads MCP servers from ~/.gemini/settings.json (on Windows %USERPROFILE%\.gemini\settings.json). Add:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "anythingmcp": {
      "httpUrl": "https://cloud.anythingmcp.com/mcp/YOUR_SERVER_ID",
      "headers": { "X-API-Key": "YOUR_MCP_API_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

1. Create an MCP API key in AnythingMCP under MCP Servers → your server → API keys, and paste it in place of YOUR_MCP_API_KEY.
2. Save the file and restart gemini.
3. Run /mcp inside Gemini CLI (or gemini mcp list in your shell): anythingmcp should show as connected.
4. Start prompting: Gemini CLI can now call the Manychat tools.

Available tools

Example prompts

• "Find the contact with the email [email protected] and show me her tags and when she last wrote to us."
• "Tag Marco Rossi as VIP and set his Lead score field to 80. Show me the change before you make it."
• "Which flows are in our Black Friday folder, and which comment triggers and QR codes do we have?"
• "Start the Welcome back flow for the WhatsApp contact +49 151 23456789. Check with me before it goes out."
• "If Laura wrote to us on Instagram in the last 24 hours, reply that her order shipped today."

FAQ

Where does Gemini CLI look for MCP servers? In ~/.gemini/settings.json for your user, or in .gemini/settings.json inside a project. gemini mcp list shows each server and whether it connects.

Next steps

• Connector landing page
• Connect to Claude
• Connect to ChatGPT