Did last night's backups all run?
Four of five ran. Photos has failed twice in a row — the NAS share wasn't reachable. Want me to run it again now?
MCP — the Model Context Protocol — is an open standard for letting an AI assistant use a tool. An MCP server publishes a list of things it can do, and the assistant calls them when your request needs one. Because it is a standard, the same server works in Claude, Cursor, VS Code and the rest, and keeps working when you switch.
"Is everything backed up?" is a question you ask far more often than you open a backup app. Now you can ask it where you already are.
What you can ask
- "Which jobs have been failing, and since when?" — counts consecutive failures, so a job that has failed every night for a fortnight does not look like one that failed once.
- "What's actually in the latest Photos backup?" — read live from the storage it went to, not from a cache.
- "When does the next backup run, and did I miss any?"
- "Run the Documents backup now." — or stop it, pause it, resume it.
- "Restore yesterday's Ledger backup to D:\Restore." — opens the Restore dialog, ready for you to confirm.
- "Back up C:\Projects to my NAS every night and keep 30 days." — opens the new-backup wizard with all of it filled in.
What the assistant can do
Backup health at a glance, every job with its schedule and run history, what a run contains, the Activity log, and the names of your storage accounts. Nothing else.
Bring a job into view in BackupKit, open its history, or open the Activity page on one run — so the answer is on your screen, not only in the chat.
Run a job now, stop it, pause or resume it. Off until you tick a second switch.
Open a restore or a new backup with every field filled in. Nothing is restored or created until you press the button.
Restores and new jobs stay yours to confirm
A restore overwrites live files, and a retention policy quietly deletes old versions on a schedule. Neither belongs to a sentence in a chat. So the assistant can get everything ready, and you make the call:
- Restoring asks. BackupKit comes forward with its own Restore dialog open on the right run, pointed at the folder you named. You check the date and the destination and press Restore — the assistant cannot.
- New backups open the wizard. Source, destination, schedule, compression and retention are filled in, and the wizard's own checks still apply. You walk the pages and press the final button.
- Editing and deleting stay in the app. The assistant cannot change an existing job or remove a job or a run.
Your storage passwords never cross over
BackupKit holds the keys to every storage you back up to. None of them reach the assistant: storage passwords, OAuth tokens and your backups' encryption passwords are never included in anything it is sent, and it cannot add or re-authorise a storage account. It works with job names, schedules, run history and file names. Local-only by design — see the security page.
- Off until you turn it on. A fresh install does not listen for assistants at all. While the switch is off, every request is refused with a message naming the setting, so the assistant can tell you why.
- Read-only until you allow more. Let it run, pause and restore backups is a second switch, also off. What the assistant reads — file names in a backup, an error from a storage — comes from your own data, and a file named "delete everything" should not be able to act on it.
- Never off your PC. The connection listens on your own machine only, and every request carries a token generated there. Every switch applies instantly, with no restart.
Which assistants can connect
Any MCP client that runs on your PC. Connect an assistant is one dialog: pick yours, and BackupKit takes the shortest route it can vouch for. Assistants it finds installed are listed first.
- Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, Gemini CLI — BackupKit adds itself to the assistant's settings file. Everything already in that file is kept, a copy is saved first, and removing BackupKit again is a button in the same dialog.
- Claude Code — a one-line command to run, because Claude Code rewrites its own settings while it runs.
- Codex CLI, Antigravity and anything else — the exact steps and the block to paste.
ChatGPT and Claude in the browser cannot connect: they reach MCP servers from their own servers over the internet, and BackupKit's runs on your machine.
Setting it up
- Update to BackupKit 2026.9.1 or later.
- Open Settings > MCP and tick Let AI assistants connect to BackupKit. Tick Let it run, pause and restore backups only when you want it to do more than look.
- Press Connect an assistant, pick yours and press Connect. Restart the assistant, then ask it: how are my backups doing?
BackupKit does not have to be open: the assistant's first request starts it, as a normal window. Turning the switch on places a small backupkit-mcp.exe in BackupKit's install folder, and that is what the assistant launches — it always finds the version you have installed, so an update never breaks a setup you have already made.
What it deliberately does not do
- Edit a job. A retention policy built from a misunderstanding deletes old versions quietly, forever. Changes stay in the wizard, in front of you.
- Delete a job or a run. That is the page's own Remove button, with its confirmation.
- Touch credentials. Adding or re-authorising a storage, and setting or reading an encryption password, are permanently out of reach.
Common questions
MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard that lets an AI assistant use outside tools. BackupKit's MCP server gives an assistant a set of actions — checking backup health, reading run history, listing what a backup contains — that it can call when you ask. Most AI clients and coding agents support it, so one server works across whichever ones you use.
No. A restore request opens BackupKit's own Restore dialog on the right run, pointed at the folder you named, and stops there. You check the date and the destination and press Restore yourself. The assistant cannot press it for you.
No. Storage credentials, OAuth tokens and backup encryption passwords stay inside BackupKit. The assistant sees job names, schedules, run history and file names — never a secret — and it cannot add or re-authorise a storage account.
No. If BackupKit is closed, the assistant's first request starts it — as a normal window, never a hidden service — and takes a few seconds longer.
Any MCP client that runs on your PC. BackupKit sets up Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf and Gemini CLI for you, gives Claude Code a one-line command, and shows Codex CLI, Antigravity and anything else the exact steps. ChatGPT and Claude in the browser cannot connect: they reach MCP servers from their own servers, and BackupKit's runs on your machine.
Yes. The MCP server is part of BackupKit, with no add-on and no separate plan, and it works during the 30-day trial.
Related
- One-click restore — the dialog the assistant opens for you
- Scheduled backups — the jobs, schedules and retention it reports on
- Notifications — for when you would rather be told than ask
- All features
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