Ask Claude or ChatGPT about your jobs: connect your AI assistant to Obra

If you already talk to Claude or ChatGPT during the day — for emails, estimates, a quick question — you can now ask them about your own jobs. Not "how do I track job costs?" but "how is the Hillside job doing?", "what did we spend on lumber last month?" or "add this receipt to the Ramirez bathroom". The assistant answers with your real numbers, the same ones your Obra dashboard shows, and links you to the page.

Setting it up takes a couple of minutes and no technical knowledge: you paste a name and an address into the assistant, and approve the connection once. This guide walks through it. Connecting an assistant is part of the Pro plan, and the 14-day trial includes it.

What the assistant can and can't do

Once connected, it can look up your projects and their money, list transactions and receipts, and — only if you allow it — send receipts into your Receipts inbox, record transactions, create projects, clients and vendors, set budgets, import a spreadsheet and pull exports.

It only ever sees what your own role in the organization allows. And whatever you allow, it can never delete or void a transaction, approve or reject an expense, pay anyone, close a project's books, or change your team, billing or public page. Those stay in the app, with you.

The name and address you'll paste

Every assistant asks for the same two things. Copy them here — the buttons do it for you.

Connect Claude (website, desktop or phone app)

Add to Claude — opens Claude with the name and address filled in, so you only press Add.

1. In Claude, open Settings, then Connectors. At the bottom of the list, tap Add custom connector.
2. Type Obra as the name and paste the address above. Leave the other fields empty and press Add.
3. The first time you ask Claude something about Obra, it shows a Connect button. Press it: Obra opens, you sign in if needed, pick your company and press Allow. Claude then finishes answering on its own.

Connect ChatGPT

ChatGPT calls this feature Developer mode. You don't need to be a developer; it is available on the Plus, Pro, Team, Enterprise and Edu plans.

1. In ChatGPT, open Settings, then Apps & Connectors, then Advanced settings, and turn on Developer mode.
2. Back on the Connectors page, press Create. Type Obra as the name, paste the address, choose OAuth as the sign-in method and press Create.
3. ChatGPT opens Obra so you can sign in, pick your company and press Allow. From then on, choose Obra from the tools menu in a chat — or just ask about your projects.

What Obra asks you when you connect

Obra shows a page naming the app that wants to connect, which company it will work in, and what it will be allowed to do. Reading is always included; sending in receipts, recording transactions, importing spreadsheets and exporting are listed separately, so you know exactly what you're allowing. If anything looks wrong, press Cancel.

One habit worth keeping: treat what an assistant proposes to record as a draft to check, just like a scanned receipt. It reads what your receipts and notes say, and it can misread them.

Things to try

• "How is the Westlake remodel doing? Anything waiting on me?"
• "What did we spend on subs this quarter, by project?"
• "Which receipts are still sitting in my inbox?"
• "Add a $412.50 expense to Westlake for the lumber delivery today, vendor ABC Lumber."
• "Export Westlake's transactions since August as a spreadsheet."

Disconnecting

In Obra, go to Settings → Connected apps. Every assistant you connected is listed with a Revoke button; revoking works immediately. Changing your password disconnects everything too. Owners and admins see every assistant their team has connected under Organization → AI agents, and can switch the feature off for everyone.

Using a coding tool instead?

Claude Code, Cursor and VS Code connect the same way; they just take the address as a command or a settings file.

The exact snippets for Cursor and VS Code, and the full walkthrough with screenshots, live in the Help Center: Connect your AI assistant.