Apps, agents and MCP
How connected apps and AI agents work in your organization: what they are, what they may do, what stays with a person, and the MCP servers.
TL;DRAI summary
You can connect apps and AI agents to Cypress to help with tasks like managing vehicles, prices, and customer relationships. These digital workers follow the same rules as people and can't make critical decisions like accepting low offers.
For: Everyone except consumers
Your organization can let software work beside your team. There are three doors, each with its own key:
| Door | Who holds it | Set up in |
|---|---|---|
| An API key | Your own systems (a fleet database, an ERP), acting as your organization | Organization → Integrations (Roles, access & navigation) |
| A connected app | A partner's app or an AI agent platform, approved through Connect Cypress | Settings → Connected apps (Connect an app or an agent) |
| An MCP server | An AI agent that speaks the Model Context Protocol, signed in with one of the two above (the Manual needs nothing) | Settings → Connected apps → MCP servers |
Whatever the door, the rules are the app's: the same checks, the same floor, the same privacy. A connected app can do nothing your organization did not approve, and nothing the app itself would refuse a person.
Agents are members of your team
An app may add agents when it connects: AI workers that hold tasks and do work in your organization. An agent is a member with the AI agent role:
- In Settings → Team it shows with a robot avatar and Connected agent where a person shows an email. It has no password and cannot sign in to the app; you cannot edit or remove it there. It follows its app: disconnecting the app switches its agents off.
- In task pickers it is listed as Name (AI agent), and a task it holds carries an AI agent chip. A task an agent made says Made by an agent, one an automation made Made by an automation, and the CRM's Tasks tab filters them with Made by agents.
- In Mission Control, Delegate gives a row to an agent as a task.
- Everything an agent does is recorded under its own name in the activity log, never as a person.
What stays with a person
Some decisions are a person's, whoever asks. An agent never:
| Never | Because |
|---|---|
| Accepts or counters an offer below the floor | The floor is the seller's consent. An API key cannot either. |
| Sets or changes the floor, or prices a car below it | It is the seller's reserve: a person at the seller sets it. An agent may set a car's listing price at or above the floor, while no live offer or sale is open. |
| Confirms that money arrived on a closing | It releases the car. A person confirms it, or your bank or accounting integration through an API key. |
| Approves a quarter's plan, Sell or Buy | An agent may prepare the plan: goals, Sequoia's schedule, a buy draft. A person approves it. |
| Emails a contact one to one | An email in your organization's name goes out from a person. An agent can log what happened, or give a person the task. |
| Activates or sends a campaign, or mails a pasted list of addresses | An agent drafts and pauses campaigns; a person starts them. |
| Switches an automation back on | An agent drafts, tries, submits and switches off automations; a person switches one back on. |
| Signs a document, accepts terms, touches billing or changes your team | These are never an agent's, at any level. |
When an app or an agent asks for one of these, nothing is done and it is told a person decides. An agent working through Cypress Operate is also given the link to the record in Cypress where a person makes the call, so it can hand the decision to one of you.
The MCP servers
AI agents can reach Cypress through three servers. Each one's address is shown on Settings → Connected apps:
- Cypress Operate works in your organization: everything your team does on the app's screens, from vehicles, prices, listings and offers to closings, documents, the CRM, campaigns, promotions, your plans, your automations and your organization's settings, under the rules above. The full list is in The app's actions.
- Cypress Intelligence reads what Cypress knows: insights, valuations, dealer demand, the market board and Sequoia's suggestions. Read-only.
- Cypress Manual searches and reads this manual. It holds no customer data and needs no key.
An admin can switch Operate or Intelligence off for the organization on the MCP servers card. A server that is off refuses your organization's keys and apps, and says where to turn it back on.
Your developers, or whoever sets up an agent, will find everything in Apps & Agents: a ten-minute quickstart in a sandbox, the MCP servers and every tool.
What your systems hear
Whatever changes in your organization, whoever changed it (a person in the app, an API key, an agent, an automation, a CSV import), your systems can be told: a webhook names what happened and where it came from. Beside the vehicle, listing and offer events there are events for your organization's settings and team, its bank accounts (named, never their numbers), its billing, each step of a closing (told to both sides; the commission is the seller's alone), the offers you made as a buyer, your CRM book, campaigns and promotions, your plans and Sequoia's recommendations. Your developers choose which to receive: see Webhooks.
For Cypress staff: CM tokens and sandboxes
A Cypress Manager has a Developers tab in Settings (the platform settings):
- CM tokens: your own token for the API and the MCP servers. It acts as you, under the same rules as in the app, for the organization you name on each request, and on the staff actions (organizations, members, approvals, labels, pricing rules, channels, automations). It is shown once; you choose how long it lasts (30 to 365 days) and can revoke it at any time. A token never makes another token.
- Sandboxes: demo organizations with vehicles, cars on the market with offers waiting, a closing, a CRM book, tasks and a buy plan, to hand a partner or a team with a test key and its MCP settings. Reset gives the world back with a new key (the old one stops), for a key that leaked; Remove empties it and revokes its keys. The partner, or its agent, can also reset the world itself, keeping its key. Nothing a sandbox does reaches a real person or is billed: an email or a text it would send is recorded, never sent.
Links into Cypress
Links in notifications, emails, webhooks and agents' messages have the form
/go/vehicle/…, /go/offer/…, /go/task/… and so on. Following one opens the
record where it lives today, after checking that you may see it. A link to
another organization's record, or to one that no longer exists, opens This
link isn't available to you, the same page for both. Cypress staff land with
the record's organization already chosen in Acting for.