Connecting an AI assistant to Signal

You can connect an AI assistant to your own Signal data and then ask it questions in conversation, instead of clicking through your dashboard to find the answer.

When to use it: For the questions that are easy to ask and tedious to look up — which of your sessions had the lowest confidence scores this term, what themes came up across your Year 9 reflections, which students have not completed the last two assessments.

This is read only. The assistant can read your Signal data. It cannot create or change anything.

Before you start

You need an AI assistant that supports connecting to external tools. This page gives step-by-step setup for ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini; Copilot and other MCP-enabled clients work the same way.

Connecting

1. Open the Connect your AI agent page.

From your dashboard, choose your profile icon in the top right, then Connect your AI Agent.

2. Copy the server URL.

Under Connection details you will find the server address with a Copy button beside it:

https://signal.gonurture.com/mcp

3. Add it to your AI client.

The page has Setup instructions with a tab for ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Pick your client’s tab and follow the three steps there.

In ChatGPT, for example: open Settings → Connectors, choose Add custom connector, and paste the server URL.

4. Sign in and approve access.

You will be asked to sign in to your Signal account and approve access. Approve it and you are connected.

There is no API key to enter. You never have to handle a key or a token by hand.

What the assistant can see

Your own account: your sessions, your questions, the responses to them. Not other teachers’ sessions, and not anything across the wider organisation.

Worth understanding before you connect

The assistant is not part of Signal. It is your own choice of provider, and it sits outside the product. Anything it reads from Signal goes to that provider and is handled under their terms, not Nurture’s.

That is the whole reason the privacy control exists. It is off by default, so unless you change it, your assistant receives real student names and email addresses. Before you connect anything, read hiding names and email addresses from an AI assistant and decide whether you want it switched on first. For most teachers working with student data, the answer is yes.

If your school or diocese requires it, it will already be on and locked, and you do not need to do anything.

Disconnecting

To disconnect, remove the Signal connector from your AI assistant. This is done in your assistant’s own settings, not in Signal.

There is no switch in Signal that revokes an assistant’s access. Signal has no control over an assistant once you have connected it — which is worth knowing before you connect one, and worth telling your IT lead if they ask.

If you want to stop an assistant reading student names without disconnecting it altogether, turn on the privacy setting instead. That takes effect immediately and does not require you to reconnect anything.