The Spendesk MCP by role: where to start, depending on your job

The problem with a library

The skills library now holds 79 skills. Filtered by tool or by use case, it answers "what exists?". It does not answer the question a new user actually has: "I'm an AP Manager, what do I do first?".

So we added a page for each of the five finance roles the library serves.

One page per role

Each page has the same four blocks:

• Five skills to start with. Picked by hand for the role, in the order we would try them. Not a ranking by score.
• All the role's skills, split in two: business skills, which answer a question, and technical references, which document the traps of one tool.
• Three articles worth reading, with real examples.
• Three things to know before you start: what the assistant cannot do for this role, what is in Beta when the role has write actions, and the behaviours that surprise people.

All five are also listed under "By role" in the site navigation.

A skill page you can read without being a developer

Skill pages used to open on the technical file: tool names, parameters, JSON. That is the right content for whoever installs the skill, and the wrong first screen for whoever will use it.

Business skills now open on:

• A title that names the job — "Get ready to close the month", not the name of a tool.
• The request to type, with a copy button.
• When to use it and what you get, in two sentences.
• How it works, as four to six steps in plain words.
• What protects you: a "Read-only" or "Can make changes" label, and a reminder of what the assistant cannot do.

The technical file is still there, folded at the bottom of the page.

Business skills and technical references

Of the 79 skills, 46 are business skills and 33 are technical references.

A business skill answers a question a finance person asks: which invoices are stuck in approval, what did we spend by category, are we ready to close. A technical reference documents how one tool behaves — how amounts are formatted on cards, which date a filter really applies to, what an empty list means.

The library now lists business skills first, labels the references, and lets you filter either group. If you are building your own skill, the references are where the traps are written down.

Tested against the real tools

Every skill in the library has been checked against the tools as they behave today, on a demo account or against the server's own definitions. Where a skill describes an action it could not run — committing an accounting export, closing a purchase order, both irreversible — the page says so.

Where to start

• Pick your role in By role and try the first skill on the list.
• New to the MCP altogether? Start with the guided tour: it reads a few real figures from your account in under two minutes.
• Before promising anything to your team, read what the Spendesk MCP cannot do.

Key takeaways

• Five pages, one per role: CFO, Controller, AP Manager, Finance Analyst, Procurement
• Each gives five skills to start with, three articles and three limits to know
• Business skill pages now open on the job, the request to type and the steps in plain words
• Technical references are labelled and listed after business skills
• Every skill has been checked against the tools as they behave today