AI agents (MCP)
Troubleshooting the AI connection
Most problems here are one of about eight things. Find your symptom.
Symptom table
| What you see | What it means | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Asked to sign in again | Normal — access is granted a day at a time | Approve it |
| "Not authorized" / repeated sign-in loop | The token expired, or the permission was revoked | Reconnect, or check the token has not been revoked |
| The agent says it has no access to your sites | The connector is not enabled for this conversation | Enable it in the chat (common in ChatGPT) |
| Tools are missing, or arguments are rejected as unknown | Your AI app cached an old list of tools | Disconnect and reconnect the connector |
| "No approval received" | Your AI app's own confirmation prompt was declined or timed out | Nothing was changed. Ask again and approve |
| "This credential is read-only" | You are using a read-only token | Create a read-and-write token |
| A module "is not enabled" | Store, bookings or forms is switched off for your account or platform-wide | Ask an administrator |
| "MCP access is disabled" | The whole connection is switched off platform-wide | Ask an administrator |
invalid_redirect_uri |
You tried to sign in from an editor or terminal, which is not supported | Use a token — see Connect VS Code and CLI agents |
| Things get slow after a long burst of work | The 60-requests-a-minute limit | Wait; it recovers on its own |
Start with whoami
Before debugging anything, ask the agent to run whoami. It reports:
- which installation it is connected to
- which account it is acting as
- whether it can make changes
- how many tools it can currently see
Those four facts settle most confusion in one step.
"It edited the wrong site"
Almost always one of two things.
You are connected to more than one installation. Site references are only
valid on the installation that issued them, and the two look identical from
inside a chat. Every tool an agent sees is labelled with its installation name
so it can tell them apart — but if you pasted a reference from elsewhere, it may
not match. Run whoami and check.
The agent guessed. If you say "the pricing page" and you have several sites, it may pick the wrong one. Name the site.
"Some tools have disappeared"
Two possible causes:
- A read-only credential. Editing tools are not offered to it at all — so
they will not merely fail, they will be missing.
whoamireports whether the credential can write. - A stale tool list. AI apps cache the list of tools when you connect. If
the server has been updated since, your app may be working from an old copy —
which looks like missing tools, or like an argument being rejected that the
documentation says exists.
whoamireports the live tool count, so you can compare. The fix is to disconnect and reconnect the connector; refreshing the chat does not do it.
401 versus 403
They are different problems and the distinction saves time:
- 401 — no credential, or a credential we do not recognise. Wrong token,
expired token, missing
Authorizationheader. - 403 — we know who you are, but this credential is not allowed to do this. Usually a read-only token being asked to write.
"It says it saved, but the page has not changed"
Check whether the page is published. Agents often build as drafts on purpose — see Build and maintain a website.
If it is published, check whether you had the same page open in the editor and saved over it. There is no locking; the last save wins.
Still stuck
Note the exact error text, what you asked for, and what whoami reported, then
contact support. Those three together are usually enough to identify it
immediately.