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MCP Connectors & Tool Calling

Connectors let the AI in Chat reach beyond the conversation and actually do things in your other tools — search your Notion workspace, look up an email, find an issue, and so on. Under the hood this uses tool calling: the AI decides it needs information, calls a tool the connector provides, gets a result back, and weaves that into its answer.

This page explains how to turn connectors on for a chat, what tool calls look like as they happen, and how to read the results.

What is a connector?​

A connector is a secure link between Rephlo and an external service (for example, Notion). Each connector exposes one or more tools — actions like "search" or "fetch a page" — that the AI can call on your behalf during a conversation.

You set connectors up once in Settings → Connectors, where you connect your account to the service. After that, they're available to switch on in any chat. To connect a service, see Connectors Settings and, on the web side, Connecting Notion.

Turning connectors on for a chat​

Connectors are chosen per conversation — you decide which ones a given chat is allowed to use, and that choice is remembered for that conversation.

  1. Open the connector menu in the chat composer.
  2. Pick one or more connected connectors to enable for this chat.
  3. Send your message as usual — the AI can now call the enabled connectors' tools when it needs to.

Only connectors you've already connected appear in the list. If you connect a new service in Settings while a chat is open, reopen the menu to refresh it. There's also a shortcut to jump straight to Settings → Connectors from the menu's footer.

When connectors are available​

A few conditions affect whether connectors can act:

  • The model must support tool calling. Connectors only work with models that can call tools. If you switch to a model that can't, the connector controls become unavailable for that chat — switch back to a tool-capable model to use them again.
  • At least one connector must be enabled for the conversation. With none selected, the chat behaves like a normal conversation.
  • The connector must be healthy. If every enabled connector is currently unreachable (for example, a sign-in expired), Rephlo shows a banner so you know tools won't run until you reconnect.

Connectors are a subscription feature. If they're not available on your plan, Rephlo will let you know — see Plans & Pricing for details. Connectors are also rolling out in stages, so they may not be turned on in every build yet (separate from your plan); if they aren't enabled in your build, the connector controls won't appear.

What a tool call looks like​

When the AI uses a connector mid-conversation, you don't just get a final answer out of nowhere — Rephlo shows a compact tool-call card in the chat timeline so you can see what happened.

Each tool call records:

  • Which connector and tool were used (for example, Notion → search).
  • Status — success, error, timeout, cancelled, or a protocol error.
  • How long it took (duration in milliseconds).
  • A short, friendly summary of the result (for example, the titles of the pages found).

When the AI makes several calls to the same connector in a row, Rephlo groups them into a single card that shows totals (how many succeeded, how many failed, total time). You can expand the card to see each individual call, and — when a full result was saved — open it to view the complete payload.

A chat using MCP tools — enabled connectors, a Notion tool call with results, and a grounded answer

A tool-call card in the chat timeline: connector name and tool, a success/error indicator, the duration, and a one-line result summary, with an expandable list when multiple calls are grouped and a "View full result" option.

Reading tool results​

The card's summary is meant to be glanceable. For a search, it might read like "3 results: Project Plan, Roadmap, Notes + 1 more." For a single page fetch, it shows the page title. If a call failed, the card shows a short error message (for example, "object not found") instead of a result.

Because these cards are part of the conversation, they stay with the chat — when you reopen the conversation later, the tool calls are still there as a record of what the AI looked up.

Privacy and your data​

Tool calls only run against the connectors you explicitly enable for a conversation, and only when the AI decides it needs them. You stay in control of which services a chat can touch. For a fuller picture of how Rephlo handles your data, see Privacy & Data.