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AI assistance for helping students

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What the copied prompt contains

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Setting up

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pawtograder": {
      "url": "https://api.<your-pawtograder-host>/functions/v1/mcp-server",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer mcp_YOUR_TOKEN_HERE"
      }
    }
  }
}

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pawtograder": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "mcp-remote",
        "https://api.<your-pawtograder-host>/functions/v1/mcp-server",
        "--header",
        "Authorization:${PAWTOGRADER_TOKEN}"
      ],
      "env": {
        "PAWTOGRADER_TOKEN": "Bearer mcp_YOUR_TOKEN_HERE"
      }
    }
  }
}

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Where the AI buttons are

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Feedback

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Available MCP tools

• get_help_request — the help request with its full conversation history
• get_discussion_thread — the thread with its replies
• get_assignment — title, description, handout URL, due date, and points

• get_submission — submission metadata and summary
• list_submission_files — the file list, without contents
• get_submission_files — file contents, filtered by glob pattern
• list_submission_tests — every test result, with an option to list only failures
• get_test_output — full output for one test
• get_submission_build_output — compilation and build errors
• get_submissions_for_student — every submission a student has made for an assignment

• list_grader_files / get_grader_files — the grader/solution repository
• list_handout_files / get_handout_files — the template/handout repository

• search_help_requests — related help requests
• search_discussion_threads — related threads

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Privacy and access control

• Staff only. Token creation and every tool call require an instructor or grader role, checked on the server, and the API Tokens menu is hidden while you preview the course as a student.
• Same visibility as the web app. The assistant reads your course as you, with your own permissions: it sees exactly what you can see in the web app and nothing more. No tool has elevated access.
• No account data. No tool returns platform account records or a student’s profile-privacy setting.
• Revocable. Tokens are long-lived signed tokens; revocation is checked on every request, so a revoked token stops working immediately.
• Auditable. Each token records a last-used timestamp.

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Managing your tokens

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Using it well

• A bug that spans several layers and resists a quick read
• A failure pattern several students have hit at once
• Drafting a long, well-structured explanation you would otherwise write by hand

• Questions you can answer in one line
• Course policy, which the assistant does not know
• Accommodations or anything sensitive about an individual student

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Troubleshooting

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pawtograder does not appear in my assistant

• Confirm the configuration file is valid JSON.
• Confirm the URL is the one from the API Tokens dialog — the API host, not the web address.
• Confirm the token has not expired; tokens last 90 days.
• Restart the assistant completely after editing its configuration.
• If you are going through the mcp-remote bridge, run the same npx command in a terminal. It will tell you whether Node.js is missing or the server rejected the header.

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”Access denied” or “Invalid or expired API token”

• Confirm your token’s Type is MCP or MCP + CLI. A CLI token has no MCP scopes and is rejected.
• Confirm the token is still Active in Your Tokens, not Expired or Revoked.
• Confirm you still have an instructor or grader role in the course you are asking about.

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The assistant cannot see any course data

• Check that the Authorization header value starts with Bearer mcp_, keeping the Bearer prefix if you moved the value into an environment variable.
• Check that you are asking about the right class ID; every tool call is scoped to one class, and you only reach classes where you are staff.
• Remember that the copied prompt carries no student content. If the assistant is guessing, its MCP connection is not working.

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Token creation fails