How to restrict Claude's data access when using the Klaviyo MCP Connector

Hi ​@MMacca – sorry for my delayed response. Moved us over to a new dedicated thread. These are great questions, so I want to be sure they don’t get buried in the other topic. I will say that you were very correct that it was not easy to find a straightforward answer about permissions. After more digging around, here is what I have figured out (if this doesn’t help, I can bring this straight to the MCP team):

To address your first question: you're right that approving the MCP connector grants Claude access to the permissions shown in that dialog. I believe the best current approach to limit exposure is to use the Custom Connector option and append read-only=true as a query parameter to the MCP server URL. This disables any tools that can perform write actions on your account.

You can also add disable-tools-with-user-generated-content=true to further restrict what Claude can read. Your URL would look like:

https://mcp.klaviyo.com/mcp?read-only=true&disable-tools-with-user-generated-content=true

To set this up via Custom Connector in Claude:

1. Go to Settings > Connectors > Add custom connector
2. Name it (e.g. "Klaviyo - [Account Name]")
3. Paste in the URL above with your desired query parameters
4. Click Add, then Connect and authorize

To your second question in the other post: yes, the local MCP server option uses a private API key instead of OAuth, which means you control exactly which scopes are granted from the very start. You'd create a Klaviyo private API key with only the specific permissions you need (e.g. read-only on Lists and Segments, nothing on Profiles), and configure it in Claude Desktop or Cursor. This gives you the most granular control over what data Claude can access.

Full setup docs here: https://developers.klaviyo.com/en/docs/klaviyo_mcp_server

Please let me know if that helps and if not, like I said, I can bring escalate the question to the mcp team!

Hi ​@GabbyEsposito - thanks for setting up the new thread and for your reply!

A couple of queries…

1. My company is on a Team Plan and we don’t seem to have the option to “Add customer connector” - any ideas?
2. One issue for read-only - we don’t want Claude to read our any sensitive profile data either. Is there any way to lock that down from the start?
3. Thanks for the Klaviyo MCP Server documents - I’m not a developer so it’s a bit beyond me! Is there any support help available to talk me through steps to set up read-only access via an API key?

Thanks for your continued help!