Using Gia from an AI Assistant
The complete guide to what Gia's Claude connection lets you do — setup, every available tool by account type, and troubleshooting.
What it is
Gia can be connected to AI assistants that speak the Model Context Protocol — claude.ai (as a connector), Claude Desktop, Claude Code, and similar clients. Once connected, you can ask the assistant in plain language to visualize event spaces for you, and it drives Gia on your behalf: it looks up your projects, finds your spaces and rental inventory, and generates styled images of real rooms.
Example asks that work today:
- “Show my ballroom set up for a warm, candlelit winter wedding.”
- “Restyle this space in a coastal palette using items we actually stock.”
- “Take the last render and add more candles and a head table.”
- “I run a venue called The Old Mill — help me show a client what our barn could look like for a spring wedding.”
Everything is generated by editing a real photo of the space — the room's structure stays; decor, lighting, layout, and mood change.
Some clients also offer ready-made starting points — restyle a space, design at a venue, restyle with real rentals. Picking one is the same as describing the job yourself; it just saves the typing. Whichever way you start, the assistant's first move is to ask Gia who you are and what you're working on.
Connecting
Claude
claude.ai and Claude Desktop — add Gia as a custom connector.
- Open the connector settings — In claude.ai or Claude Desktop, go to
Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector - Paste the Gia server URL — Name it “Gia” and paste this URL:
https://api.meetgia.ai/mcp/gia - Sign in with your Gia account — A standard Gia login page opens — email/password or Google/Apple. There are no API keys to copy.
- Approve access and start asking — Approve the consent screen, then start a new chat and ask Claude to show you one of your spaces, styled.
These are the clients that show Gia’s interactive panels — renders you can refine in place, and grids of photographs you pick from.
Claude Code
One command in your terminal, then sign in from the CLI.
- Add the Gia server — Run this once in your terminal:
claude mcp add --transport http gia https://api.meetgia.ai/mcp/gia - Sign in with your Gia account — Run /mcp inside Claude Code, pick “gia”, and choose Authenticate. A browser opens for the same Gia sign-in — email/password or Google/Apple.
/mcp - Start asking — Ask Claude Code to show you one of your spaces, styled. Renders come back as links you can open.
Claude Code does not render Gia’s interactive panels — everything still works, and you get the options as text instead.
Other MCP clients
Any client that speaks MCP over HTTP with OAuth sign-in.
- Point your client at the Gia server — Add a remote MCP server with this URL. Your client discovers Gia and walks you through the standard OAuth sign-in.
https://api.meetgia.ai/mcp/gia - Or authenticate with a bearer token — Building your own integration? This endpoint accepts a regular Gia API bearer token via the Authorization header instead of OAuth.
https://api.meetgia.ai/mcp/gia-token
Clients without panel support get every answer as text — the assistant reads the options out instead of showing them.
You sign in as yourself. The assistant can only see what your Gia account can see — your organization's projects (including ones shared with you by teammates), your properties, and your inventory. It cannot reach other organizations' work.
Finish your Gia setup first. Everything the assistant does happens inside your organization’s workspace — a space, your rules, and one rental provider. Until that’s done, every tool answers with the same message pointing you back to your Gia dashboard. Do it once and there is nothing to reconnect afterwards.
Panels you can use directly
Some of Gia's answers come back as a panel you can interact with, not just text — in clients that support them (claude.ai and Claude Desktop today). You do not have to do anything to turn them on.
- Renders — A picture in the conversation with controls under it: Refine to change it further without retyping the whole request, and Before to compare against the untouched room. Refining counts as a new generation against your limits.
- Choices — Rental items, your spaces, marketplace venue rooms and earlier renders come back as a grid of photographs you pick from. You can change your mind — pick a different tile and the assistant works from your latest choice.
- Photo upload — Adding a space’s photo opens an upload panel: click it or drag a file in. This is the only way a photo reaches Gia — pasting an image into the chat or offering a web link will not work.
If your client does not support panels, everything still works; you get the answer as text and the assistant reads the options out.
What you can do, by account type
The assistant works through a set of named Gia tools — you'll see these names in its activity log as it works. Every account gets the same tool list; what differs is what each one answers. A tool that doesn't apply to you says so and points at the one that does, rather than staying silent.
Venue / property owner
The full workflow is available:
- Pick a project — or have one made — the assistant lists your design projects, each with its design direction (keywords, color palette, style, budget tier) and styles renders consistently with it. If the project you want doesn't exist, ask for it and the assistant creates it. Same for a property you haven't added or a space you haven't set up: you can go from an empty account to a finished render without leaving the conversation.
- Pick a space — it lists your property's spaces with their photos (multiple photos = different angles of the same room).
- Find real rentals — it searches your inventory plus your approved rental partners' catalogs, so what it places in a render is something a client can actually book.
- Generate and iterate — renders take roughly 30–90 seconds. Every render lands in the project you chose, so it shows up in your Gia dashboard's project workspace alongside work done in Vibe Studio. You can keep refining a result (“more candles”, “swap the linens to sage”) and composite earlier work — for example, drop a flatlay place setting into a room scene.
- Move to the app when you need finer control — ask for something a conversation can't do, like moving one object, masking part of the image or working in layers, and the assistant hands you a link that opens that render in Vibe Studio ready to edit.
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
get_context | Who you are, how your account works, and what you can work on — the assistant’s first call |
list_projectsget_project | Your design projects, each with its design direction (keywords, palette, style, budget tier) |
create_project | Start a new project, with its design direction |
create_property | Add a venue property your organization owns |
create_space | Add a room to a property, and open the panel to upload its photo |
list_properties | The properties your organization owns |
list_spaceschoose_space | A property’s spaces with their photos — the starting images for renders. Name the space and the assistant just looks it up; leave the choice open and you get a panel of photographs to pick from |
search_inventory | Real, bookable rental items — your inventory plus your approved rental partners’ catalogs |
list_rental_partners | The rental catalogs your inventory search draws from, for the property your project is at |
search_rental_providersattach_rental_partnerdetach_rental_partner | Find a rental provider and add them to that property, so their catalog joins your inventory search — or remove one |
list_project_images | The finished renders and flatlays already in a project, to build on or composite |
generate_imageget_image | Start a render of a space and fetch the result |
open_in_app | A link that opens a finished render in Vibe Studio, ready to edit |
Property owners don't get marketplace venue search — you design your own spaces, not other venues'. Rental providers attach to a property, so tell the assistant which project you're working in and it adds them to the right one.
Event planner
You design at venues you don't own, so instead of a property list you put venues on a project — and everything you do sits under a space of one of them.
- Pick a project — or have one made.
- Put the venue on the project. Ask for it by name: the assistant searches the Gia marketplace and, when you pick one, adds it to the project. That step copies the venue's spaces and photos into your own records, which is what makes them yours to restyle. A venue you've used on another project can be re-used rather than added again, and a venue that isn't in the marketplace at all you can create yourself — the assistant makes it and its first space together, then opens a panel for you to add the photo.
- Pick a space — the venue's spaces, with their photos.
- Find real rentals, the same as anyone else.
- Generate and iterate. The render lands in the project and on the venue, so it's where you'd expect it in your dashboard.
- Move to the app for finer control — moving one object, masking a region, layers. Ask, and the assistant gives you a link that opens that render in Vibe Studio ready to edit.
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
get_context | Who you are, how your account works, and what you can work on — the assistant’s first call |
list_projectsget_projectcreate_project | Your projects and their design direction |
search_venueschoose_venue | Find a Gia marketplace venue for a project — results say which are already on it. Name the venue and the assistant just finds it; ask it to show you the options and you get a panel to pick from |
attach_venue_to_project | Put a venue on the project: a marketplace one, or one your account already has |
list_project_venues | The venues on a project — or, with scope="account", every venue you’ve ever added, to re-use |
create_custom_venue | Add a venue that isn’t in the Gia marketplace, with its first space |
create_space | Add another space to one of your venues, and open the panel for its photo |
list_spaceschoose_space | Your venues’ spaces with their photos — the starting images for renders. Name the space and the assistant looks it up; leave the choice open and you get a panel of photographs |
search_inventory | Real, bookable rental items — your inventory plus your rental providers’ catalogs |
list_rental_partners | The rental catalogs your inventory search draws from |
search_rental_providerschoose_rental_providerattach_rental_partnerdetach_rental_partner | Find a rental provider and add or remove them — by name, or by picking from a panel |
list_project_images | Finished work in a project, to build on or composite |
generate_imageget_image | Start a render and fetch the result |
open_in_app | A link that opens a finished render in Vibe Studio, ready to edit |
Planners don't get create_property — properties are venues an organization owns, and yours are attached per project instead. The assistant will say so if asked.
Good to know
- Renders count against your normal Gia generation limits — The same quota as the app, including per-project limits for organization accounts. When you’re over, the assistant is told so and will say so.
- Archived projects are read-only — The assistant can look at them but will refuse to generate into one until it’s restored.
- Teammates’ work is shared at the project level — Anyone who can see a project in Gia can list and view its renders through the assistant too.
- Your own photos come from the upload panel, and only from there — The assistant cannot take a photo you paste into the chat, and it will not accept a link either — a web address it was handed is something Gia would have to go and fetch, which isn’t safe to do on an assistant’s say-so.
- One photo per space — Uploading a new one replaces what was there.
- Creating something twice is safe — Ask for a project, property or space that already exists by that name and you get the existing one back, not a duplicate. Matching ignores capitalisation, and space names only have to be unique within their property — two venues can each have a “Ballroom”.
- Creating needs the matching permission — The same permissions the Gia dashboard uses. A view-only member is told plainly to ask an owner or admin rather than getting a silent failure.
Not available via the assistant (yet)
- Creating flatlays (place settings) from scratch — compositing an existing flatlay into a scene works.
- Giving the assistant a photo by pasting it into the chat, or as a link. Use the upload panel that appears when you create a space.
- Renaming, archiving or deleting projects, properties and spaces — you can create them from the assistant, but changing and removing them stays in your Gia dashboard.
- Editing inventory, managing your team, or authoring design decks.
- For planners: creating properties (those belong to venue owners).
- Setting your account up. Adding your first space, writing your rules and choosing your first rental provider stay in the Gia dashboard.
Troubleshooting
- “A tool is missing” / the assistant says it can’t see your organization’s features: The tool list is cached by the client when you first connect. If your account changed (e.g. you joined an organization after connecting), remove and re-add the Gia connector; if the list is still stale, that’s a known client-side caching limitation — contact support.
- A render seems stuck: Generation normally finishes inside two minutes; the assistant polls for it. If it reports a failure, just ask it to try again — failed generations don’t consume the result.
- Panels show no pictures, or the Before button is missing: The panel could not load images from Gia’s storage. This is an environment or configuration problem rather than something you can fix — contact support.
- The upload panel fails partway: Try once more, then contact support. Sending the photo as a link instead will not work — the assistant refuses those, so the panel is the way through.
- You don’t see the panels or the new abilities at all: Your client cached Gia’s capabilities when you first connected. Remove and re-add the Gia connector.
- Can I connect with an API token instead of signing in?: Yes, for first-party and CLI use. Point the client at https://api.meetgia.ai/mcp/gia-token and pass a regular Gia API bearer token in the Authorization header. The standard connector URL uses OAuth sign-in instead — no keys to manage.