How to Connect Tally to Claude (and What It Can't Do)
Tally quietly shipped one of the better form-builder MCP stories around. There’s an official hosted server at https://api.tally.so/mcp — documented in Tally’s developer docs, still labeled beta — with OAuth sign-in (an API key works too), and Tally says it’s included on every plan, free tier included. No directory listing on Claude’s side yet as of mid-2026, so on claude.ai you add it as a custom connector, which takes a paid Claude plan; in Claude Code the OAuth flow kicks off the first time you use it.
What makes Tally’s server unusual isn’t the auth, though. Most form tools that expose anything to AI expose reading submissions. Tally’s MCP server can build and edit the forms themselves.
Describing a form into existence
Tally’s editor thinks in blocks — questions, layout, and logic blocks that show or skip fields based on earlier answers — and the MCP server drives that editor. In a chat, Claude can create a new form from a description, modify a live form without you opening the editor, list forms across your workspaces, and pull submissions filtered by status or date range.
In practice, prompts look like:
- “Build a client intake form: name, email, company size, and a budget dropdown — and if they pick ‘Agency’, add a conditional question about team size.”
- “Add a hidden UTM source field to the waitlist form without changing anything visitors can see.”
- “Pull last week’s submissions to the beta signup form and tell me the three most requested features.”
That first prompt is the party trick: conditional logic is exactly the fiddly, click-heavy part of form building, and describing it beats configuring it. And because the changes hit live forms, treat edits with the same care you’d give the editor itself — ask Claude to recap what it changed.
The 2 a.m. submission problem
Now the other half. Forms don’t generate work while you’re looking at them; they generate it whenever someone hits submit. A demo request lands at 2 a.m. — it should already be in the CRM with a reply drafted before your competitor wakes up. A waitlist signup deserves a Slack post. A high-budget intake response should become a calendar hold and a task, not a row you discover Thursday.
None of that can start from Claude’s side. The connector runs inside conversations you open; a new Tally submission can’t open one. Tally’s native notifications and webhooks fire on submit, but they move raw data — they don’t qualify the lead, decide the routing, or write the reply. So you end up with a strange split: an AI that can reason about your submissions brilliantly, attached to a channel that can’t tell it anything arrived.
Giving submissions somewhere to go: Carly
Carly closes that split. It’s an AI executive assistant that runs in the cloud and treats “a new Tally submission landed” as a starting gun: it reads the response, applies judgment (is this lead qualified? which tier did they pick?), then acts — adds them to the CRM, sends the welcome or follow-up email (really sends, on Gmail and Outlook), posts the Slack update, books the call.
You set it up by describing the outcome — “every new Tally lead goes into the CRM and gets a personalized welcome email within five minutes” — and Carly interviews you, then builds the workflow with you and runs it 24/7. AI agents start at $35/month, and steps in a workflow that don’t use AI run free and unlimited. See the Tally integration page and the full integrations catalog.
Split of labor: Claude’s Tally MCP vs Carly
| Claude (Tally MCP) | Carly | |
|---|---|---|
| Build and edit Tally forms by describing them | Yes | No — Carly works the submission side, not the editor |
| Analyze and summarize submissions | Yes, when you ask | Yes, on a schedule or trigger |
| Act the instant a submission lands | No | Yes |
| Add the lead to a CRM and send the welcome email | No | Yes |
| Runs while you sleep | No | Yes (cloud) |
| Integration cost | Server free on all Tally plans; paid Claude plan to connect | AI agents from $35/mo |
Fair summary: use Claude’s connector to make the form and to interrogate results; use Carly so each response triggers the follow-through on its own.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Claude integrate with Tally?
Yes — Tally runs an official MCP server at api.tally.so/mcp with OAuth. It’s not in Claude’s connector directory as of mid-2026, so on claude.ai it goes in as a custom connector (paid Claude plan required), and it works only inside chats you start.
Is the Tally MCP server free?
The server itself is available on every Tally plan, including free — no add-on. The Claude side is where cost enters: custom connectors require a paid Claude plan. Note Tally marks the server as beta, so tools may change.
Can Claude build a Tally form for me?
Yes, including conditional logic — describe the form and the branching (“if they pick Agency, ask about team size”) and Claude creates or edits it through the MCP server. It can also modify live forms, so have it confirm changes.
Can Claude respond when someone submits my form?
No. Submissions can’t reach Claude — there’s no trigger mechanism, and Tally’s webhooks have nowhere to land in a chat. Instant routing, CRM entry, and reply emails on each submission are what Carly does, in the cloud, around the clock.
What does Carly cost for a Tally workflow?
AI agents start at $35/month, and workflow steps that don’t use AI run free and unlimited. A single agent can route every submission — CRM, email, Slack, calendar — the moment it arrives.
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