This topic is a reference for the Authoring MCP Server: it lists the tools available to AI agents and the rate limits that apply to MCP Server requests.
Available Tools
The Authoring MCP Server provides two categories of tools.
Read-only tools allow agents to:
- List projects, publications, and translation projects in the portal
- List topics within a project or publication, including API documentation topics
- Retrieve topic content
- Retrieve the table of contents structure
- Search portal content
- Query AnswerGenius
- Retrieve topic statuses and available workflow transitions
Write tools allow agents to:
- Create projects
- Create and edit topics, including workflow fields (status, assignee, owner)
- Modify the table of contents structure
The following actions are not currently supported: deleting topics or projects, importing content using the ClickHelp import engine, publishing content, changing project visibility, and modifying portal settings, home pages, styles, or scripts.
| While the built-in import engine is not accessible via the Authoring MCP Server, you can ask an agent to process content in any format it can parse — including PDF, Excel, or PowerPoint files — and create topics from that content directly. |
Topics in API documentation projects cannot be created or edited, and only workflow fields can be modified in translation projects.
Rate Limits
There are the following limits for the Authoring MCP server tool requests:
|
Limit
|
Value
|
Comments
|
|---|---|---|
|
MCP tool calls per portal per day
|
20 000
|
MCP tool calls from all users of the same portal per day.
|
|
MCP tool calls per portal per minute
|
180
|
MCP tool calls from all users of the same portal per minute.
|
|
MCP tool calls per IP address per minute
|
60 |
MCP tool calls per user (IP address) per minute.
|
|
Read tool requests per second
|
10 |
Requests when an MCP read-only tool reads information.
|
|
Write tool requests per second
|
10
|
Requests when an MCP write tool updates content.
|
|
Long tasks concurrent count
|
3
|
Long tasks - when an MCP tool performs an action with a project or publication. Currently, it can be only creation of a project.
|
- MCP tool call - one successful request of a read or write tool (for example, searching for a topic or creating one).
-
Limits for read and write MCP tool requests are tracked separately.
Limit Is Reached
When a limit is reached, the AI agent is told that it has made too many requests and should wait before trying again. Most AI agents handle this on their own — they pause for a moment and retry automatically — so in most cases you will not see anything go wrong.
If you do see a rate limit error in your AI agent, here is what to do:
- Wait about a minute, then try again. The per-minute limits reset every minute, so a short pause is usually enough.
- Check whether teammates are working on the same portal at the same time. Some limits apply to the whole portal, not just to you. If several people are heavily using AI agents on the same portal at once, their combined activity can reach the portal limit.
If your portal regularly needs more capacity, higher limits are available through the REST API & MCP: High Volume add-on. See the Pricing page for details.