Quilt Connect Server

Connect Server requires Quilt Platform version 1.68 or later.

Quilt Connect Server is an identity provider and gateway that enables external services to securely interact with your Quilt data and perform actions on behalf of your users. Connect Server:

• Authenticates requests using your organization's identity provider

• Issues session tokens scoped to individual user permissions

• Routes requests to authorized services within your AWS environment

One such service is the Platform MCP Server, which lets AI assistants interact with your Quilt data through natural language.

Admin Setup

Connect Server is disabled by default. To enable it, set the ConnectAllowedHosts CloudFormation parameter to a non-empty value.

CloudFormation Parameters

Parameter	Default	Description
ConnectAllowedHosts	(empty)	Comma-separated list of allowed OAuth redirect origins. Empty = disabled. See Entry formats below.
ConnectSecurityGroup	(empty)	Optional EC2 security group ID for Connect ALB IP allowlisting. Empty = allow all.
CertificateArnConnect	(empty)	Optional ACM certificate ARN for the Connect ALB. Empty = reuses main stack TLS certificate.

ConnectAllowedHosts Entry Formats

Each comma-separated entry can be one of:

Format	Example	Matches
Hostname	claude.ai	https://claude.ai/* (HTTPS only)
Custom scheme	cursor://	cursor://<any-host>/* (for desktop apps with a custom URI scheme)
Localhost	localhost	http://localhost:<any-port>/* and http://127.0.0.1:<any-port>/* (HTTP only; either loopback enables both)

Example covering web, desktop, and local clients:

claude.ai, claude.com, cursor://, localhost

Entries are case-insensitive. Trailing dots on hostnames are ignored. Network schemes (http://, https://, etc.) are not valid entries and are silently ignored — use a bare hostname for HTTPS clients and a custom scheme (cursor://) for desktop clients.

DNS Configuration

After deploying with Connect enabled, create a DNS alias record for your Connect subdomain (typically <stack-name>-connect.<your-domain>):

Route 53 Field	Value
Record type	A (alias)
Alias target	ConnectLoadBalancerDNSName CloudFormation output
Hosted zone ID	ConnectLoadBalancerCanonicalHostedZoneID output

The final Connect Server hostname is available in the ConnectHost CloudFormation output.

IP Allowlisting (Optional)

To restrict which IP ranges can reach the Connect Server, create an EC2 security group with inbound rules on port 443 for your trusted CIDR ranges, then pass the security group ID as ConnectSecurityGroup. If omitted, the Connect ALB accepts traffic from any IP.