LinkedIn MCP Connector Not Showing Up? Fixes That Work

A remote MCP connector (Model Context Protocol — the open standard that lets an AI assistant call outside tools) fails in a small number of predictable ways. Almost none of them mean the connector is broken. This page is organised by what you actually see on screen, so find your symptom and jump to it.

The connector does not appear in my chat at all

You added it in settings, the settings page shows it, and yet the assistant says it has no LinkedIn tools.

Most likely cause: the chat you are in was opened before the connector was added. An assistant loads its list of available tools once, when a conversation starts. Adding, removing or re-authorising a connector after that point does not reach back into an open conversation. The old chat keeps the old list forever.

The fix: open a completely new chat. Not a new message in the same thread — a new conversation. This one step resolves the majority of “my connector vanished” reports, and it is worth doing before you investigate anything else.

If a new chat still shows nothing, check two things in settings:

• The connector is enabled, not merely present. Some clients list a connector that has been toggled off.
• The server address is exactly https://kalovio.com/mcp — with the /mcp path on the end. Pasting only the domain gives you the marketing website, not the server, and the connection will never complete.

ChatGPT says it is not attached or available in this chat

This is the single most common ChatGPT-specific problem, and the wording is honest but easy to misread. The connector is installed. It is just not switched on for the conversation you are sitting in.

In ChatGPT, a Developer Mode connector is off by default in every new conversation. You have to turn it on each time, per chat, from the tools menu — the plus button near the message box. Open it, find the connector in the list, and switch it on. The assistant then reloads its tools and can see them.

Two smaller ChatGPT traps worth ruling out:

• Developer Mode itself has to be enabled first, in settings, before the plugin list appears at all.
• When adding the server, the authentication type must be set to OAuth. Leaving it on “no authentication” produces a connector that appears to add successfully and then cannot do anything, because it never asks you to sign in.

Claude shows the connector but no tools

The connector is listed, possibly with a tick beside it, but the assistant insists it cannot post.

Most likely cause: the connection was added but sign-in never finished. Adding a remote MCP server and authorising it are two separate steps. The first tells the assistant where the server lives. The second opens a browser window where you sign in and grant access. If that window was closed, blocked by a pop-up blocker, or lost behind another tab, the connector stays in a half-added state — visible, but with an empty tool list.

The fix: go back into the connector in settings and use its connect or authorise option, then let the sign-in flow complete all the way to the confirmation page. After that, start a new chat so the tool list is loaded fresh.

One other cause fits this symptom: the connection did complete, but LinkedIn itself was never connected afterwards. Kalovio has two separate sign-ins by design — one between your AI app and Kalovio, and a second between Kalovio and LinkedIn. Asking the assistant to check your account status will tell you which half is missing.

Sign-in opens LinkedIn then fails

The LinkedIn consent page appears, you approve it, and you land back on an error — or on a page that looks like it worked, but posting still fails afterwards.

The usual culprit is a permission that was not granted on the consent screen. Publishing requires the scope w_member_social (a scope is the specific permission an app asks LinkedIn for). If that box was unticked, or the consent screen was dismissed part-way, LinkedIn creates the connection with identity access only. You are signed in. You simply cannot post.

The symptom is distinctive: your name and account show up correctly, but every publish attempt is rejected. The fix is to disconnect and connect again, accepting the full consent screen, or to use the reconnect tool which sends you a fresh link.

Two other things that break this step:

• A browser blocking third-party cookies or pop-ups. The OAuth handshake needs the browser window to open and return. Try a normal window rather than a private one, and allow pop-ups for the sign-in.
• Being signed in to the wrong LinkedIn account. The consent screen grants access to whichever account the browser is already logged in to. If you run a personal and a work account, check the name shown on the consent page before approving.

It worked last month and stopped

Nothing changed on your side, and one day the posting stops with an authentication error.

This is almost always the token expiring, and it is expected. LinkedIn member access tokens last roughly 60 days. Self-serve apps — apps built on LinkedIn’s free, public products rather than partner status — are not issued a refresh token, which is the credential that would let a tool renew access quietly in the background. Without one, every such tool must ask you to sign in again when the 60 days are up.

The fix: ask the assistant to reconnect your LinkedIn account. Kalovio’s reconnect tool returns a link that takes you through the LinkedIn consent screen again. It takes a few seconds, your drafts and scheduled posts are untouched, and you are back.

Any tool that promises permanent LinkedIn access without periodic reconnection is either using partner-level access you have not been given, or is not using the official API at all.

It posts fine but images fail

Text posts publish, image posts do not. Work through these in order.

That second row deserves a proper explanation, because it surprises people. Dragging an image into the chat window does not send it to the connector. This is a limit of how MCP works today, not a bug in any one tool: tool call arguments are plain structured text, and there is no standard route for a client to hand a file to a server. Claude has no path for this at all. Instead, ask for an upload link, open it, and add your files there. They then sit in your library and can be attached to a post by name.

Still stuck? A two-minute checklist

• Open a brand-new chat. Do this first, always.
• In ChatGPT, switch the connector on inside that chat from the tools menu.
• Check the address ends in /mcp.
• Ask the assistant for your account status — it will say whether LinkedIn is connected and when access expires.
• If it says expired or disconnected, ask it to reconnect LinkedIn and complete the consent screen fully.
• For image problems, use the upload link, and keep each file under 20 MB.

If you have worked through all of that and it still will not connect, email support@kalovio.com with the client you are using and the exact wording of the message you see. The wording usually identifies which of the two sign-ins failed.