MCP

Chamilo 3.0 exposes an MCP server so AI assistants and agents (Claude, ChatGPT connectors, or any MCP-compatible client) can act inside the platform on behalf of an authenticated user, using that user's own permissions — there is no separate service account or elevated access.

What MCP Adds to Chamilo

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard that lets AI clients call a defined set of "tools" exposed by a server. Chamilo's MCP server is reachable at a single endpoint, /mcp, and exposes a curated set of teacher-facing course-management tools rather than the entire API surface.

Available Capabilities

Every call runs as the connected user, so a tool only ever sees and modifies courses that user manages. The current tool set:

Tool	What it does
Current user	Return the identity and roles of the authenticated user
Teacher courses	List courses the user manages as a teacher
Course overview	Return base-course information and resource counts
Create course	Create a new course using the platform's course-creation rules
Create course assignment	Create a draft or published assignment with a description and maximum score
Create course test	Create an AI-assisted multiple-choice test from a topic description or an existing document
Get course test response status	Report which students have answered, are in progress, or are pending on a test
Get user course test score	Return a student's latest and best completed scores on a test
Create training satisfaction survey	Create a seven-question satisfaction survey
Create course learning path	Create a learning path from pages supplied by the MCP client
List documents	List the documents in a course's Documents tool
Read course document	Return the HTML content, title, and metadata of an editable document
Edit course document	Replace the full HTML content of an existing editable document
Create course document	Create an AI-assisted HTML document in the root Documents folder
Create course illustration	Generate an AI illustration for a topic and save it as a document
Illustrate document paragraph	Insert an existing image or video before or after a paragraph in a document
Find recent course forum activity	Find recent, visible forum posts related to a topic
Review course quality	Analyze a course's learning paths, documents, tests, assignments, and surveys, and return improvement recommendations

This list is curated by the Chamilo core team, not user-extensible from within the platform — teachers cannot add their own tools.

How Users Connect

Personal MCP API key

Each user generates their own key under Social network > MCP API key:

The MCP API key page, showing an inactive key, the Generate API key button, and the Remote MCP connection block with the endpoint URL and Authorization header format

• Clicking Generate API key creates a key and displays it once — Chamilo only stores a masked version afterward, so the full key must be copied and stored securely immediately.

• Generating a new key immediately revokes the previous one.

• The page shows the key's status (active/inactive), the MCP endpoint to configure in the client, and the creation and last-used dates.

• The Remote MCP connection panel spells out exactly what to put in the MCP client: the endpoint URL and an Authorization: Bearer <your MCP API key> header.

As the page itself notes, the key authenticates the client as that user's account — it does not grant any permission the account does not already have.

OAuth 2.1 (remote clients and connectors)

For MCP clients that support OAuth discovery and dynamic client registration (rather than a manually pasted key), Chamilo also acts as an OAuth 2.1 authorization server: the client discovers Chamilo's endpoints, registers itself, and redirects the user to /oauth/authorize to approve access. Approved applications appear under Social network > Authorized applications, where the user can revoke any they no longer use or recognize.

Security Considerations

• No privilege escalation. Every MCP tool call and every OAuth-authorized app runs with the connecting user's own Chamilo permissions — a personal API key or an authorized app can never do more than that user could already do by hand.

• Bearer-only, rate-limited. /mcp accepts only a Bearer credential — a personal MCP API key, an OAuth access token, or (in development) a JWT. Authentication attempts are rate-limited per IP address to slow down credential-guessing.

• Narrow public surface. The only unauthenticated traffic /mcp accepts is the OPTIONS preflight; every actual call requires ROLE_USER. The OAuth discovery, dynamic client registration, and token endpoints are intentionally public, as required by the OAuth 2.1 / MCP specifications — this does not grant access by itself, it only lets a client learn how to start the authorization flow.

• DNS-rebinding protection is deliberately disabled for /mcp. The bundle that implements MCP normally restricts the endpoint to localhost unless a static list of allowed hostnames is configured — a poor fit for a multi-URL Chamilo portal reachable under many hostnames. Chamilo disables that check because it is redundant here: every /mcp request already requires a Bearer credential regardless of its Host/Origin header, and a DNS-rebinding attack (which relies on ambient, cookie-style authentication riding along with a spoofed Host) cannot forge a bearer token it doesn't already have.

Configuring the MCP Server

Unlike most integrations in this guide, MCP has no admin-panel settings page — it is configured at the file level, in config/packages/mcp.yaml, and requires shell access to the server:

Key	Purpose
app, version, description	Identity Chamilo reports to connecting MCP clients
client_transports.stdio / client_transports.http	Which transports are active; Chamilo enables both by default
http.path	The MCP HTTP endpoint (/mcp by default)
http.allowed_hosts	DNS-rebinding host allowlist — set to false on Chamilo (see Security Considerations above)
http.session.store, .directory, .ttl	Where MCP session state is persisted and for how long

To disable the MCP server entirely, set client_transports.http: false (and stdio: false if the CLI transport should also be turned off) and clear the cache:

php bin/console cache:clear --env=prod
php bin/console cache:warmup --env=prod

Tips

• Treat an MCP API key like a password — anyone holding it can act as that user through any MCP client.

• Encourage users to periodically review Authorized applications and revoke anything they don't recognize.

• See AI Configuration for the AI providers that back the content-generation tools (test creation, document creation, illustrations) listed above.