Connect an AI assistant to RescueTime

What your assistant can use

After you authorize the connection, an assistant can request bounded portions of your RescueTime information:

• Recent applications and websites, with category and productivity context.
• Time totals grouped by activity, category, overview, or productivity level.
• Your own project-time history, including time recorded against user-owned and available team projects.
• Your current focus state, including an active focus zone, session, or timer.
• Public RescueTime definitions that help it interpret categories and productivity levels.

The current connection is for helping you with your own time. It does not provide a team or organization analysis mode, even if your RescueTime account manages other people.

Built-in data limits

The service limits each request to a focused amount of information:

Your assistant should prefer the smallest range that answers your question. RescueTime returns the time zone and coverage period with report results so the assistant can describe them accurately.

Focus sessions and timers

An assistant can check whether you are currently in a focus zone, focus session, or timer as part of read access. With additional focustime_data permission, it can start a bounded focus session, start a timer, or stop the active session or timer.

Starting or stopping focus changes your live RescueTime state. Your assistant should check the current state first and act only after you explicitly ask. Stopping a timer can finalize its Focus Session record and create linked project time.

MCP API keys remain read-only during this early release: they can inspect current focus state but cannot change it. Use RescueTime sign-in (OAuth) to grant focus control.

Connect your assistant

In your assistant's MCP or connected-tools settings, add this server address:

https://www.rescuetime.com/mcp

Option 1: Sign in with RescueTime

If your assistant supports OAuth for remote MCP servers, use its sign-in or authorization flow. RescueTime will ask you to sign in and approve the requested access, including focus control when the client requests it. This is the recommended option because you do not need to copy a credential into the assistant.

Option 2: Use an MCP API key

For a personal or locally managed assistant, create an AI agents (MCP) key in RescueTime and add it to the assistant's secure credential setting as a Bearer token. These keys currently provide read-only MCP access. Do not paste the key into a chat message or commit it to a configuration repository.

Manage your RescueTime API keys →

Questions you can try

• “Help me understand where my work time went this week.”
• “Compare my focused work over the last four weeks.”
• “How much time have I recorded against my current project?”
• “Suggest a realistic time box for the next step in this project.”
• “Am I currently in a focus session?”
• “Start a 25-minute focus session for this task.”
• “Stop my current timer and tell me how long it ran.”
• “Help me make a work-life balance plan based on the patterns in my recent time.”

RescueTime productivity classifications are personal context, not moral judgments or employee-performance scores. Verify important conclusions before acting on them.

Disconnect or troubleshoot

You can revoke an MCP API key at any time from API key management. For an OAuth connection, disconnect RescueTime from the assistant's connected-tools settings. If a report fails, try a smaller date range and confirm that the requested information exists in your RescueTime account.

If the client cannot discover or connect to the server, confirm that it supports remote MCP servers using Streamable HTTP and that the server address is exactly https://www.rescuetime.com/mcp.

Connecting requires RescueTime sign-in or an MCP API key. If your assistant added this server before sign-in was required and now reports authentication errors without offering a sign-in prompt, remove the server from the assistant and add it again.