Harpoon Launches AI Assistant Integration, Letting Independent Professionals Manage Invoicing and Projects by Conversation
Harpoon now connects directly to AI assistants like Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, and VS Code. Once connected, you can track time, create invoices, manage clients and projects, and check your business metrics — all by asking in plain English instead of clicking through screens.
The integration uses the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open standard that lets AI assistants work with external tools using your real account data. It's available now to all Harpoon users at no extra cost.
What You Can Do
The integration covers every major area of Harpoon through 24 tools. Here's what's available:
| Area | What You Can Do |
|---|---|
| Dashboard & Team | Check hours logged, outstanding and overdue invoices, unbilled time, active timers, and draft invoices. Switch between teams if you belong to more than one. |
| Clients | Search and view clients with financial summaries. Create new clients with contact info. Update details and status. |
| Projects & Tasks | Browse projects with budget and hours tracking. Create new projects, update status and dates. View tasks and hourly rates. |
| Time Tracking | Log time entries, start and stop running timers, edit or delete entries. Filter by date range, project, client, or billed status. |
| Invoicing | View invoices with full financial detail. Create draft invoices with line items. Mark as sent. Record payments — status updates automatically. |
| Expenses | List and filter expenses by date, category, vendor, or status. |
For the full list of all 24 tools and their technical details, see the MCP documentation.
What It Feels Like
The best way to understand this is to see the kinds of things you can say to your AI assistant once Harpoon is connected:
- "How many hours did I log this week?"
- "Log 2 hours of Design work on the Acme Website project for today."
- "Start a timer on the Acme Website project, Development task."
- "Create a draft invoice for Acme Corp with 40 hours of Development at $150/hr."
- "What invoices are overdue?"
- "Record a $5,000 payment on invoice #00042."
- "Create a new client called Bright Studios with contact email hello@brightstudios.com."
No menus, no forms, no switching between apps. You ask for what you need and it's done.
Why We Built This
If you've started using AI assistants in your day-to-day work, you've probably noticed how natural it feels to just ask for what you need — drafting an email, summarizing a document, answering a quick question. But when it comes to your business tools, there's usually a wall. You can ask your assistant to help you write a proposal, but you can't ask it to log your time or check which invoices are overdue.
We wanted to remove that wall. For freelancers and small teams, administrative tasks like logging time, sending invoices, and tracking expenses can eat up hours every week. By connecting Harpoon to the AI assistants you're already using, those tasks become part of the same conversation where you're writing, coding, and communicating with clients.
"Independent professionals didn't get into their craft to spend hours on invoicing and time tracking," said Andy Johnson, co-founder of Harpoon. "AI assistants are becoming the primary interface for how people work. Connecting Harpoon directly to these tools means you can manage the business side of freelancing without breaking away from the work itself."
How to Connect
Setup takes less than five minutes. For full instructions, visit our MCP documentation.
Step 1: Get your API token. Go to your Harpoon account settings and grab your API token.
Step 2: Add Harpoon to your AI assistant. Each client has its own way to add connections. Here's an example for Claude Desktop — add this to your claude_desktop_config.json file:
{
"mcpServers": {
"harpoon": {
"type": "streamable-http",
"url": "https://app.harpoonapp.com/mcp/harpoon",
"headers": {
"Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN"
}
}
}
}Replace YOUR_API_TOKEN with the token from your account settings. Other AI clients — ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code with GitHub Copilot — have a similar configuration. You just need the URL and your token.
That's it. Once connected, your assistant has access to all 24 Harpoon tools.
Security
All communication between your AI assistant and Harpoon is encrypted over HTTPS. Your assistant can only access data you have permission to see — the same role-based permissions as the Harpoon app apply. Your connection uses token-based authentication, and you can revoke your API token at any time from your account settings to immediately disconnect access.
The MCP server includes built-in rate limits — 5 requests per second with short bursts of up to 10, and 15 concurrent connections at a time. For typical usage you'll never come close to these limits.
Availability and Pricing
The AI assistant integration is included with all Harpoon plans at no additional cost. Plans start at $9/month for individual professionals, with team plans for up to 8 users at $39/month and agency plans for 20+ users at $99/month. All plans include a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.
Have questions or feedback? Drop us a line at support@harpoonapp.com.
