Sandcastles + Claude
MCP Set-up

Here is how to get set up with the Sandcastles MCP in Claude. This lets you run advanced social media data analysis directly from Claude, on your own channels or on any channel in your niche.

01What this actually does

Sandcastles pulls real performance data from Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts. The MCP is the pipe that carries that data straight into Claude, so instead of reading a dashboard you can just ask questions in plain English and get answers back.

Drop in a video URL and get the transcript, the stats, the hook, and the storytelling structure. Point it at a competitor and ask what is working. Hand it fifty videos and ask what the non obvious pattern is. Same data either way, the difference is you can now query it like a conversation.

Before you start. You need a Pro, Visionary, or Titan plan on sandcastles.ai. The Starter plan does not include MCP access. You also need the Claude desktop app, not Claude in a browser tab. Plugins only install in the desktop app.

02Set up your Watchlist first

Do this before you touch the MCP. Your Watchlist is the set of channels Sandcastles tracks for you, and several of the best tools read from it. If it is empty, those tools have nothing to analyze. A good starting Watchlist is:

1Your own channelSo you can benchmark yourself against everyone else in the list.
2Five to ten direct competitorsPeople selling something close to what you sell, to the same kind of audience.
3Three to five format leadersAccounts outside your niche whose editing, hooks, or pacing you want to borrow. This is where most of the interesting ideas come from.

03Install the MCP in Claude

This takes about thirty seconds of actual work. There are three separate things happening and it helps to know that up front, because they look repetitive while you are clicking through them: first you install the plugin, then you add the connector, then you log in to Sandcastles so data can flow.

Part one, download the plugin.

1Go to Sandcastles and open SettingsThen open Connectors. You will see an MCP section.
2Click Download Claude Cowork PluginGrab the newest version listed. Sandcastles ships updates now and then, so if you come back later and see a higher version number, download that one and repeat this section to swap it in.
3Save the .zip fileDo not unzip it. Claude wants the zip exactly as it downloaded.

Part two, install it into Claude.

4Open the Claude desktop app and go to HomeNot Code. Home. Start a new chat so you are on a clean screen.
5Click CustomizeA settings window opens.
6Go to Plugins in the bottom left, then Add, then Upload PluginAn upload window appears.
7Drag the .zip in and click UploadThe moment it installs you will see a list of skills appear. That list is how you know it worked.

03Install the MCP in Claude, continued

Part three, add the connector and log in.

8Click Connectors in the middle of the pageNot the Connectors item in the left sidebar yet. The middle of the page. You will see Sandcastles listed.
9Click Install, then AddA pop up appears titled Add Custom Connector, already filled in with Sandcastles and its MCP address. The two remaining fields are meant to be empty. Leave them empty and click Add.
10Now go to Connectors in the left sidebarFind the Sandcastles row and click Connect. A login window opens.
11Log in with your Sandcastles credentialsThis is the step that actually turns the data on. When it succeeds you get a confirmation screen with a button that sends you back to Claude.
12Set permissions to Always AllowBack in Claude, open Customize > Connectors and click the Sandcastles row. Set it to Always Allow so the tools run without asking every single time. Anything that spends credits will still ask you first.

HOW TO KNOW IT WORKED

Customize > Connectors > Sandcastles shows as connected

If the status is not connected, you did not finish the login in step 11. That is the single most common place people get stuck, and it is almost always a blocked pop up.

04If the login window never appears

You clicked Connect and nothing happened. Work through these in order.

1Move your windows aroundThe login window opens behind the Claude app more often than you would think.
2Turn off your pop up blockerThis is the usual culprit. Turn it off, then undo the connector steps above and redo them from step 8.
3Check whether you are on a company Claude planSome workplace plans block external plugins entirely. If that is your situation, no amount of retrying will fix it, you need it enabled on the account.

05The tools worth knowing

Once you are set up, there are two ways to use these. Type / and pick the tool by name, or just describe what you want in plain English and Claude will work out which tool to reach for. Both work. The slash is faster when you know exactly what you want.

Tool	What it does
/analyzeOne video, deep	Drop in any Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube Shorts URL and it breaks the video all the way down. You get the transcript, the stats, and the analysis of the idea, format, topic, hook, storytelling structure, and visual layout. You do not have to ask for anything specific, the default already covers it, but you can push further and ask something like which power words are carrying the hook.
/topicWatchlist	Runs an analysis of the top performing topics across every channel in your Watchlist. This is your answer to what is actually landing in the niche right now.
/video-suggestWatchlist	Suggests what to make next, based on what is already working across your Watchlist. Use it when you are staring at an empty content calendar.
/channels-recapOne channel	Drop in any channel URL and get a full read on that channel based on how its recent content performed. Works on your own account and works just as well on a competitor.
/videos-watchlistWatchlist	Pulls the top performing videos across your Watchlist and hands them back to you so you can go watch them yourself. Good weekly habit.
/channels-searchDiscovery	Describe your niche or a topic and ask for creators to study. You can set criteria like follower count or platform, and ask for any number of channels. This is how you find people to add to the Watchlist in the first place.
/formats-watchlistWatchlist	Analyzes the top performing formats across your Watchlist. Not what they are talking about, but how the video is built.
/hooks-watchlistWatchlist	Analyzes the top performing hooks across your Watchlist. The first three seconds, isolated, across everyone you track.

06Ask for a visual report

This is the single easiest upgrade to how you use any of this. After you get an answer, ask Claude to build it into a visual report you can open as an HTML file. You get charts, rendered thumbnails, and buttons that jump straight to each video.

One note from experience: open that file in Chrome rather than viewing it inside Claude. Images do not always render properly in the in-chat preview, and the same file looks like a real dashboard once it is in a browser.

Try this. Paste in your channel and ask for a breakdown of your three best performing videos from the last month, why each one worked, and the common thread between them. Then ask for it as a visual report.

07The one tip that changes everything

Analyze in the Sandcastles web app first, then ask questions in Claude. This is worth understanding because it is the difference between waiting a few seconds and waiting a very long time.

If you ask Claude for your top fifty videos and none of them have been analyzed yet, Claude has to sit there and analyze all fifty, one round trip at a time. It is painfully slow. Instead, go into Sandcastles, hit bulk analyze on the channel, and let it chew through them there. Then come back to Claude and say take all of those videos and tell me what the hidden patterns are. Now the data already exists and it pipes across in one go.

Same question, same data. Analyzing in the web app first makes it roughly ten to a hundred times faster.

easyhive.ai · Sandcastles + Claude MCP Set-up

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Sandcastles + ClaudeMCP Set-up

Sandcastles + Claude
MCP Set-up