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Connecting things: overview

Anton is an open-source AI coworker that can execute tasks, connect to tools and data, remember lessons, and improve its workflows over time. To work with your data, it first needs a connection — and the whole flow is conversational.

How /connect works​

Type /connect in a chat session (or run anton connect from your shell):

/connect

(anton) What would you like to connect?
  Examples: PostgreSQL, MySQL, Snowflake, BigQuery, Gmail, GitHub, HubSpot, Salesforce, Jira, REST API.
  1. Pick an engine. Name any supported engine from the data sources catalog. If Anton doesn't recognize the name, it offers to set it up as a custom datasource — see Custom integrations.
  2. Anton collects the fields conversationally. It shows what the engine needs, then asks for each value one at a time. You can also paste a connection string or several key=value pairs in one go and Anton extracts the fields for you. Type help for guidance on where to find a credential, or skip to save a partial connection and finish later with /edit.
  3. Secrets go into the local credential vault. Passwords, tokens, and keys are stored on your machine and are never placed in LLM prompts. At run time they are injected as environment variables into the scratchpad — the model only ever sees variable names like DS_PASSWORD, never the values. See Security model.
  4. Anton tests the connection. It runs a short test snippet in an isolated scratchpad (installing the driver if needed). If the test fails, Anton shows the error and offers to let you re-enter credentials.

On success the connection is saved under a slug like postgres-3f2a9c1b (engine plus a short generated name) and Anton is ready to query it.

The five connection commands​

In chatFrom your shellWhat it does
/connectanton connectConnect a new data source, or pass a saved slug to reconnect without re-entering credentials
/listanton listList all saved connections with their status
/editanton edit NAMEUpdate credentials for an existing connection (Enter keeps the current value)
/removeanton remove NAMEDelete a connection from the vault (asks for confirmation)
/testanton test NAMERe-run the connection test for a saved connection

NAME is the connection slug in engine-name format, e.g. postgres-mydb. Running /remove with no argument shows a numbered list to pick from.

Reconnecting​

Saved connections survive across sessions. To reattach one in a new session, pass its slug:

/connect postgres-3f2a9c1b

or just ask in plain language — "connect to my Gmail and find unanswered emails" — and Anton finds the credentials in the vault itself.

Next steps​