Edit Your Guidebooks With Claude — BetterSTR MCP Is Live

You can now ask Claude to edit your BetterSTR guidebooks, look up reservations, generate guest payment links, and drop map pins for nearby places — in plain English. Today we're shipping the official BetterSTR MCP, a small connector that lets Claude (Desktop, Code, or any other MCP-aware host) act on your account through our User API.

What's an MCP, in one sentence?

Model Context Protocol is an open standard that lets AI assistants like Claude safely use real tools — in our case, the BetterSTR User API. You install a tiny local connector, paste in your API credentials, and Claude can now do real work in your guidebooks instead of just talking about it.

What you can do today

The MCP currently exposes 23 tools covering properties, guidebook entries, reservations, payment links, property tags, map locations, Google Places lookups, SMS to guests, and WiFi monitoring. Here are real prompts you can paste into Claude right now.

Reservations & guests

What check-ins do I have today? Claude filters by today's date, lists arrivals across all of your properties with guest names and channels.

How many bookings did I get last month, and which property had the most? A single call returns the total count for the booking-date window plus the breakdown — no spreadsheet needed.

Find reservation RC6SZG. The MCP looks up the booking by either our internal id or the guest-facing confirmation code, returning dates, guest details, and the property.

When is Sarah Jane arriving, and at which property? A server-side guest-name search — no paging through your reservation list to find one match.

Guest payment links (Stripe Connect)

Generate a $300 payment link for Barry's booking at the Gold Coast apartment — keep the currency he was originally quoted. Claude reads the reservation's currency (AUD in this case), passes it to the link generator, and hands you back a URL that opens the payment overlay in the guidebook. Nothing is charged until the guest visits and pays.

Guidebook entries

Guidebooks have a three-level structure — top-level menu → sub-menu → content card. The MCP understands the convention and creates the right rows in the right order.

Add a Wi-Fi entry to the 30c Snowmass guide — SSID BeachHouse_Guest, password surfsup2024. Claude finds the property, looks for an existing parent menu, plans the structure, shows you the plan, and creates the entries after you confirm.

Add a Ski Hire section pointing to https://tcb.co.nz to every Ohakune property — no confirmation needed. For batch jobs over a tag, you can opt out of step-by-step approval. Claude still re-confirms anything destructive.

Rename the "Parking" entry on 30d Snowmass to "Parking & EV Charging". Targeted edits without delete-and-recreate — the entry keeps its id and any related references stay valid.

Map locations

Add Sky Tower to our Atiamuri property guide. Claude searches Google Places, shows you the name, address, phone, website, coordinates, and a Maps link, and waits for confirmation before saving the pin. The Google enrichment (types, rating, ratings count) is stored on the row exactly like the web UI does.

Move the Sky Tower pin from Atiamuri to the Ohakune tag. One call — the scope flips from a single property to all 7 Ohakune properties without recreating the pin.

Add the local supermarket to every property in the Ohakune tag. Tag-scoped locations show up automatically on every property the tag covers — no per-property repetition.

SMS to your guests Charges per message

Send an SMS to one guest or a whole tag's worth of currently-staying guests in a single instruction. The MCP always quotes the cost first — number of recipients, total cents, segment count if the message is long — and only sends after you confirm. You can't text arbitrary phone numbers; every recipient is a guest tied to a reservation on your account.

SMS everyone currently staying in Ohakune: "Power outage at the moment — power company contacted, updates to follow." Claude resolves the Ohakune properties (by tag if you have one, otherwise by city), filters to currently-staying reservations with valid phone numbers, shows you the recipient list + total cost in cents, and only sends after you say yes.

Urgent: SMS all guests staying with us right now in Los Angeles to please close all windows due to a large wildfire — we want to protect from smoke damage. Pure city-based filter — no tag needed. Claude resolves your active LA properties, finds every currently-staying guest with a valid phone, quotes the total cost (typically <$5 for a whole city), and sends the moment you confirm. The kind of message that's tedious to coordinate manually during an emergency.

Text reservation RC6SZG: "Lock code is 4729 — welcome!" Single-recipient sends use the same quote-then-confirm flow. Cheap (10¢) but you still see the confirmation.

Send Barry his guidebook link — he's on reservation RC6SZG. Drop the literal token {guide_link} into your message and the server expands it to that guest's short URL (e.g. https://r.betterstr.com/edvS3B5j, 32 chars). One short URL per reservation, reused if you send again later. Saves enough characters to fit in a single SMS segment.

How much would it cost to send a 200-character pool-maintenance note to everyone in the Ohakune tag? Messages over 160 characters split into segments. Claude returns the segment count and the per-recipient × per-segment cost so you know the total before agreeing.

SMS the guest from last week's 30c Snowmass booking that we found their charger. Texting a guest after their check-out triggers a built-in "this reservation is in the past — are you sure?" re-confirmation that always fires, even with blanket consent earlier in the session. Protects against accidental sends to old bookings.

GSM-7 encoding only — no emoji or smart quotes. Claude will rewrite or warn you if your message contains unsupported characters before quoting. Recipients can reply STOP to opt out; opt-outs are honoured automatically on future sends.

WiFi monitoring & control Subscription required

If your account has a BetterSTR-managed WiFi subscription (hosted UniFi, hosted Omada, or customer-owned UniFi), Claude can answer live questions about every property's network — and even take action on individual devices. The current network state is fetched live from your controller and cached for 30 seconds so quick follow-ups stay snappy.

How many WiFi devices are connected to Hidden Hollow On The Pond? Claude finds the property, picks the right controller (BYOD or hosted), and answers with the wireless client count split by SSID — wired devices excluded so you get the answer you actually meant.

Is any access point at the Atiamuri property offline? Returns each AP's state and a top-level offline count so a one-line answer is possible without skimming.

Show me the unauthorised devices on the 30c Snowmass guest network — names and MACs. Captive-portal devices that haven't completed the splash page come back with their device hostname (often very recognisable, e.g. roborock-vacuum-a15), MAC address, SSID, AP name, and how recently they were seen.

Authorise the Roborock vacuum on the guest network — it's mine, give it 24 hours. Claude confirms the device (name + MAC + SSID + duration) before authorising. Bypass per-request with the usual "just do it" phrase.

Kick that unknown laptop that's been sitting on the guest portal for two hours. Destructive actions always re-confirm — Claude tells you exactly which client it's about to disconnect, even if you've given blanket consent earlier in the session.

Multi-step jobs

I have 15 cafes in a spreadsheet — let's add them all under the Ohakune tag. Confirm each Google place with me first. For batch work, Claude walks through one row at a time. Google place lookups are cached for 24 hours, so repeated runs of the same batch don't double up on lookup costs.

Built-in guard rails

The MCP is designed for production guidebooks, so it's opinionated about a few things:

Disambiguate first. If you say "30 Snowmass" and you have 30a, 30c, 30d, and 30e, Claude lists the matches and asks which one — never picks blindly.
Preflight writes. Before any create / update / delete, Claude summarises the plan (target, change, blast radius) and waits for confirmation. You can opt out per-instruction ("just do it", "no approval needed") or for the whole session.
Destructive deletes always re-confirm. Even with blanket consent, deletes that affect more than one row (cascades, tag-scoped removals) prompt one more time.
Rate limited. Per-credential per-minute caps stop runaway jobs. Reservation and Google Places queries have their own tighter buckets.

Premium features

Most of the MCP is available on every account. Google Places lookups (search + place details + automatic enrichment when saving a location with a place_id) require an active guidebook-premium subscription, because each call costs us a Google Maps Platform request. Non-premium accounts can still save map pins by passing coordinates manually.

Get started in 3 steps

Generate API credentials Sign in to your profile, scroll to API Credentials, click New API Credentials, and copy both the client_id (starts with bsc_) and the client_secret (starts with bss_). The secret is shown once — keep it somewhere safe.

Install the connector The MCP runs as a small local process spawned by Claude on demand. The simplest install is via npx — no manual download, just add it to your Claude config and the package is fetched and cached on first run.

npx -y @betterstr/claude-mcp

Wire it into Claude Add this block to your Claude Desktop config (~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on macOS, or %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json on Windows). Restart Claude and the BetterSTR tools appear in the tools menu.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "betterstr": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@betterstr/claude-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "BETTERSTR_CLIENT_ID": "bsc_…",
        "BETTERSTR_CLIENT_SECRET": "bss_…"
      }
    }
  }
}

For Claude Code, run:

claude mcp add betterstr -- npx -y @betterstr/claude-mcp \
  --env BETTERSTR_CLIENT_ID=bsc_… \
  --env BETTERSTR_CLIENT_SECRET=bss_…

Source is on GitLab at gitlab.com/icepicknz/betterstr-claude-mcp — file a bug, contribute, or read the full tool reference there.

Stuck? Let Claude install it for you

If editing config files isn't your thing, you don't have to. Once you have your client_id and client_secret from step 1, open Claude Desktop or Claude Code and just ask it to do the install — Claude knows how to write its own config file and will restart itself when it's done.

Copy & paste this prompt

Please install the BetterSTR MCP for me — the npm package is @betterstr/claude-mcp. My client_id is bsc_… and my client_secret is bss_…. Add it to your config and restart so the tools become available. Paste in your actual bsc_… and bss_… values. Claude will edit claude_desktop_config.json (or run claude mcp add if you're in Claude Code), restart, and confirm the BetterSTR tools are live before handing back to you.

A note on safety: your secret only goes into the local config file on your own machine — it isn't transmitted anywhere by the install itself. If you'd rather not paste it into a chat at all, generate a fresh credential pair in your profile, use it for the install, and you can revoke it from the same page any time.

What's next

This is v0.1 and we're iterating fast based on real host feedback. The roadmap includes server-side fuzzy search (so Claude doesn't need to pull whole lists), bulk-insert endpoints for spreadsheet imports, duplicate detection on map pins, and a whoami tool so Claude can introspect what your account has access to before suggesting next steps.

If you're using the MCP and want a workflow added, tell us — that's the most direct way to shape the next release.

Got an idea for a new tool?

We're iterating on the MCP based on how real hosts use it. Tell us what you wish Claude could do for your guidebooks, reservations, or guest comms — every suggestion goes into the roadmap discussion.

Suggest a Feature Open a BetterSTR Account

About BetterSTR

Founded in New Zealand, BetterSTR provides innovative digital tools for short-term rental hosts and property managers. Our platform combines automation, guest experience optimization, and marketing tools into one seamless ecosystem — helping hosts save time, delight guests, and build their direct booking channels.

BetterSTR's suite includes Free Digital Guidebooks, Wi-Fi Marketing, Automated Messaging, and Direct Booking Funnels designed for real-world hosts who want professional results without monthly subscriptions.

Learn more at: https://betterstr.com

Questions, bug reports, or feature requests for the MCP? Email support@betterstr.com.

Edit Your Guidebooks With Claude — BetterSTR's MCP Is Live