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Set up your workspace.

Connect needs its own authentication, storage, and encryption credentials. No provider keys belong in the application .env.

Application configuration

Clerk authenticationConfigured

Use a separate Clerk application for Connect. Add its publishable and secret keys.

Z8Data storageConfigured

Use a dedicated Z8Data project with database read and write keys. Connect stores its records in connect.db.

Credential encryptionConfigured

Set a stable, base64-encoded 32-byte key. Keep a backup; changing it makes existing credentials unreadable.

Application originConfigured

Set NEXT_PUBLIC_APP_URL to your application’s exact origin, such as http://localhost:3000.

Configuration checks confirm that variables are present. Initializing storage checks the actual Z8Data connection. Restart the application after editing .env; rebuild when changing public variables.

Initialize storage

After preparing .env, sign in and initialize the dedicated Connect database. This creates the schema without deleting existing records.

External MCP servers

Remote servers must use HTTPS and Streamable HTTP with bearer-key or no authentication. Add trusted server origins to the allowlist before connecting.

CONNECT_MCP_ALLOWED_ORIGINS=https://mcp.example.com

External MCP connections are disabled until an allowlist is configured.

Prepare your .env

Copy .env.example to .env, fill in your application settings, and generate the encryption key locally.

cp .env.example .env
node -e "console.log(require('crypto').randomBytes(32).toString('base64'))"

Never reuse Z8Log’s storage project. Connect’s provider keys are supplied through Connections after sign-in.