I apologize for asking this since most of you seem to know what you are doing, but can anyone tell me what I need to do in Tinderbox to use Claude with it? I can’t find anything in TB 11.6 to hook it up. I’ve searched the forums but haven’t found anything that I recognize for accomplishing this.
I’ve been watching the meetup video with Andreas Grimm and it looks like the potential is amazing. I have a subscription with Perplexity and it is awesome, but I don’t know whether it will ever work with TB so I thought I’d try Claude. I do have AI integration enabled.
The forum is not the correct place to look for actual documentation. Had you first checked Tinderbox app Help or aTbRef, both cover this. Please read this aTbRef article and the sub-articles (you can ignore the one on Gemini). Short version:
Install Claude Desktop and then close.
In Tinderbox, use the Tinderbox 11 menu and select Enable All AI Integration.
Close Tinderbox.
Re-open Claude Desktop. It should re-open Tinderbox.
In any TBX wish to use in tandem with Claude, go to Documents Settings::General and enable AI use.
I took the plunge today and subscribed to Claude. Following the list of steps offered by @mwra , I was able to begin teaching myself how to use Tinderbox with Claude.
There were a few hiccups. One was the MCP server being offline. I quit both Tinderbox and Claude, relaunched Claude and it launched Tinderbox and things went ok from there.
I created a test document Claude Training, and began chatting with Claude.
I got tripped up in Hints/AI as Claude was working in the Claude container, while I was observing the Claude Code container.
There was also a genuine bit of mystery, as I distinctly recall prompting Claude set the OnAdd action of the Session Notes container to assign the Session Note prototype. Later, Claude asked me if I wanted it to do that. It’s a little unsettling.
I love that you’ve shared the session text, as seeing others edging forwards makes the initial plunge a bit less frightening if we erroneously the assume out first will have no missteps. It useful too to catch the tenor of the Ai’s replay and its degree of detail.
I’ve also had trouble with the MCP connection with Claude. I had it working and everything seemed fine, but then the connection dropped. I also quit both Claude and Tinderbox, relaunched Claude, it opened Tinderbox and everything seemed fine for a bit then the connection dropped again. Here is what Claude said:
Even get_document is failing now — the MCP connection dropped again entirely. This is clearly an instability issue worth solving properly.
I’d suggest posting in the Tinderbox Forum’s AI category (AI - Tinderbox Forum) describing the problem — that it connects initially but drops when switching documents or after a short time. Mark Anderson and the Eastgate folks are active there and this is exactly the kind of MCP/Claude integration issue they’d know how to fix. It may be something simple like a timeout setting or a configuration tweak.
I realize this isn’t the forum Claude suggested, but since the same issue came up here I thought it might be OK to post.
I’ve seen this, but it’s highly inconsistent. It also differs between Claude, Claude Code, and the Code tab in Claude Desktop.
I am reasonably sure it’s a Claude bug. Recently, Claude Code started to (presumably intentionally) shut down its Tinderbox and then reopen it later; I assume this is an effort to conserve computational resources.
If simply restarting isn’t helping:
Quit Claude and Tinderbox
Open Tinderbox
Toggle AI Integration off, then on again
Open the document of interest
In Document Settings, toggle AI Integration
Quit Tinderbox
Claude Code is able to see and diagnose its own settings, which can be helpful.
In recalcitrant cases, Claude’s Developer Preferences offers access to log files. I can take a look, or you can ask Claude to analyze them…
Don’t overlook the fact that Claude had some system outages recently. Unless you are working fully local, you are communicating with cloud-based systems and aspects of the internal at all sorts of levels fail or go slowly more often than we assume. I definitely experienced some Claude weirdness recently that appears to coincide with Claude system failures. There is a Claude page reporting performance (sorry, can’t find the link ATM, Google should know) and be aware vendors may <cough> not be the most honest reporters of their performance as they have stock-holders to keep happy. So, third-party reporters are probably more trustworthy sources.
Therefore, before rushing to re-boot everything, it pays to check Claude or [AI vendor] is operating correctly else all downstream test will fail to fix anything.