MCP and Connectors

In addition to tools you make available to the model with function calling, you can give models new capabilities using connectors and remote MCP servers. These tools give the model the ability to connect to and control external services when needed to respond to a user’s prompt. These tool calls can either be allowed automatically, or restricted with explicit approval required by you as the developer.

• Connectors are OpenAI-maintained MCP wrappers for popular services like Google Workspace or Dropbox, like the connectors available in ChatGPT.
• Remote MCP servers can be any server on the public Internet that implements a remote Model Context Protocol (MCP) server.

This guide will show how to use both remote MCP servers and connectors to give the model access to new capabilities.

Secure MCP Tunnel

If your MCP server is private, on-premises, or behind a firewall, use Secure MCP Tunnel to connect it to supported OpenAI products without exposing the server to the public internet. Download the latest public release from openai/tunnel-client.

Quickstart

Check out the examples below to see how remote MCP servers and connectors work through the Responses API. Both connectors and remote MCP servers can be used with the mcp built-in tool type.

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16curl https://api.openai.com/v1/responses \ 
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \ 
-H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENAI_API_KEY" \ 
-d '{
  "model": "gpt-5.6",
    "tools": [
      {
        "type": "mcp",
        "server_label": "dmcp",
        "server_description": "A Dungeons and Dragons MCP server to assist with dice rolling.",
        "server_url": "https://dmcp-server.deno.dev/mcp",
        "require_approval": "never"
      }
    ],
    "input": "Roll 2d4+1"
  }'

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19import OpenAI from "openai";
const client = new OpenAI();

const resp = await client.responses.create({
  model: "gpt-5.6",
  tools: [
    {
      type: "mcp",
      server_label: "dmcp",
      server_description:
        "A Dungeons and Dragons MCP server to assist with dice rolling.",
      server_url: "https://dmcp-server.deno.dev/mcp",
      require_approval: "never",
    },
  ],
  input: "Roll 2d4+1",
});

console.log(resp.output_text);

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19from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI()

resp = client.responses.create(
    model="gpt-5.6",
    tools=[
        {
            "type": "mcp",
            "server_label": "dmcp",
            "server_description": "A Dungeons and Dragons MCP server to assist with dice rolling.",
            "server_url": "https://dmcp-server.deno.dev/mcp",
            "require_approval": "never",
        },
    ],
    input="Roll 2d4+1",
)

print(resp.output_text)

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