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Announcing Native Planning Center (PCO) MCP Integration & the Open-Source PCO MCP Explorer
Today, we're announcing native support for Planning Center Online (PCO) through PCO's official Model Context Protocol (MCP) server — and releasing a free, open-source developer tool alongside it.
TL;DR
- What's new: Babelbeez now connects natively to Planning Center Online via PCO's official MCP server (
mcp.planningcenteronline.com/mcp). - Core feature: Real-time conversational AI voice agents (gpt-realtime-2) can now collect prayer requests, visitor intake, and care needs 24/7 — and automatically submit structured entries directly to PCO People & Forms.
- Developer release: A free, open-source web app for inspecting PCO's live MCP tool manifest using client-side, Bring-Your-Own-OAuth authentication.
- Live Explorer: babelbeez.github.io/pco-mcp-explorer
- GitHub: github.com/babelbeez/pco-mcp-explorer
- Church operations overview: Babelbeez Faith Operations
How the native PCO MCP integration works
When a visitor interacts with a church's web voice agent, Babelbeez handles the conversational reasoning in real time using advanced speech-to-speech models. Rather than relying on static webforms or delayed voicemails, the integration translates a spoken conversation into a structured database entry inside Planning Center:
- A visitor starts a voice conversation on the church's website — any time, day or night.
- The Babelbeez voice agent engages naturally, gathering and structuring the details (name, email, category of need, prayer details).
- Mid-conversation, the agent makes a scoped MCP tool call to Planning Center's official MCP server.
- PCO creates or updates the Person record in PCO People and submits a completed PCO Form — which can trigger the church's assigned Workflows.
Conversational intake
The agent greets site visitors and offers an immediate, human response — structuring the intake details as the conversation unfolds instead of asking visitors to fill out a form after the fact.
MCP tool execution
Mid-conversation, the agent executes scoped tool calls to locate the correct PCO Form schema and understand its required fields before submitting anything.
Automated submission
The agent creates or updates the Person profile in PCO People and submits a completed PCO Form on the visitor's behalf, triggering whatever follow-up Workflow the church has configured.
Security architecture: scoped tool allow-lists
Connecting a public-facing AI voice agent to a church management system demands strict permission boundaries. Because PCO's MCP server exposes administrative database capabilities, Babelbeez enforces a configurable allow-list architecture for public endpoints. Only the tools below are exposed to the voice agent:
| Allowed MCP tool | Function in PCO | Security boundary |
|---|---|---|
people_forms | Locates the designated prayer/care intake form | Read-only schema check |
people_form_fields | Fetches input field requirements | Read-only schema check |
people_form_submissions_create | Submits caller data as a completed form | Write-only (form submission) |
Administrative database endpoints — such as deleting records, modifying giving histories, or querying financial data — are strictly excluded from the default AI tool scope.
Free developer tool: PCO MCP Explorer
Because Planning Center's MCP server is currently in beta and doesn't yet ship a public schema documentation page, we built a browser-native tool inspector for church developers and IT leads.
Key features
- Bring-Your-Own-OAuth (BYO-OAuth): Authenticates directly against Planning Center's official OAuth server using Dynamic Client Registration (RFC 7591) and PKCE S256 (RFC 7636).
- Client-side execution: Runs entirely inside your browser. Access tokens live temporarily in
sessionStorageand are destroyed on disconnect or tab close. There's no backend database and no third-party tracking. - Live manifest inspection: Renders humanized tool names, clean parameter tables, read/destructive badges, and raw JSON definitions — with a one-click Export JSON feature.
Try the PCO MCP Explorer, or dig into the source on GitHub.
Get started
Ready to give your church website a 24/7 voice that feeds straight into Planning Center? Sign up for Babelbeez and connect PCO from the App Directory in minutes — no coding required.