Use the Pendo MCP server and Leo with Orchestrate

Last updated: November 02, 2026 14:38

Leo and AI clients connected to the Pendo MCP server can read your Orchestrate journeys and emails, and create draft journeys and emails from a request in your own words. You review each draft in Orchestrate and decide when it goes live.

Use cases

Build a journey from a requirement. Describe who the journey is for, what you want visitors to do, and when it starts. Leo or your AI client creates a draft with the emails, in-app guides, split rules, audience, and goal in place. You review one draft instead of setting each part in a different editor.
Check a draft before launch. Ask whether the audience, start date, goal, subject lines, and senders are set, and what's left to finish in Orchestrate.
Find out why a visitor didn't get a message. Ask about one visitor to see which journeys they're in, which step they're on, and which emails they received.
Find where visitors leave a journey. See which step loses the most visitors, and who received an email but didn't open it.
Report across journeys. Compare entries, goal attainment, opens, clicks, and guide views for several journeys in one answer, without exporting each one.
Draft a one-time announcement. Create a standalone email and write its content, then choose the audience and send time in Orchestrate.
Apply one structure to many journeys. Ask for the same sender, naming, or report format across a set of journeys.

Answers come from your Orchestrate data, so you can ask questions that the journey map and reports don't answer directly, such as which visitors received a specific email but didn't open it, or how one visitor is moving through several journeys.

Reading and writing happen in the same conversation. You can ask which email performs worst, have a replacement drafted, and ask who hasn't received it. Before it builds, Leo or your AI client checks your usage data, visitor fields, and saved segments, so personalization and goals use fields and events that exist in your subscription.

Choose Leo or an AI client

The Orchestrate tools are available in two places:

Leo. Ask Leo in Pendo. Leo uses the Orchestrate tools from the Pendo MCP server, and you don't connect anything. Leo reads your Orchestrate data when Leo is available to you.
An AI client you connect. Connect Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, or another AI client to the Pendo MCP server. For setup steps, see Connect to the Pendo MCP server. In Claude Code, the pendo-orchestrate plugin adds the orchestrate-journeys skill, with guidance for building journeys. For installation steps, see Overview of Pendo AI skills.

Turning on the write tools makes the Orchestrate write tools available to Leo and to any AI client you connect. Leo uses them without a connected AI client. If your organization can't connect an external AI client, for example because of a security review, you can still draft journeys and emails in Leo, with no IT or security integration.

Each request runs with your own Pendo permissions. Leo and your AI client reach only the applications and journeys you can open yourself.

What Leo and AI clients can do in Orchestrate

Leo and AI clients can read your Orchestrate data and create and edit drafts. Sending and activating stay in Orchestrate.

Read your journeys and emails

You can ask about anything in Orchestrate that you can view in Pendo:

Journeys and emails. Which journeys and emails exist, with their status, audience, start date, goal, subject line, sender, and email type.
Journey structure. Every step and branch in a journey, in order, including steps that aren't connected to the rest of the journey.
Journey results. Entries, completions, and goal attainment.
Step results. For email steps, the number sent, delivered, opened, and clicked, along with hard bounces, unsubscribes, complaints, and the matching rates. For in-app guide steps, views and clicks.
Visitors in a journey. Who's in a journey right now and which step each visitor is on. Who completed it, and which visitors received, opened, or clicked an email or viewed a guide.
One visitor. Which active and paused journeys a visitor is in, which step they're on in each one, and which Orchestrate emails they received, opened, or clicked.
Standalone emails. Results for emails sent outside a journey, and the visitors who received them.

Create and edit drafts

Leo and AI clients can create and change the following in a draft journey:

Journeys. Create a draft journey from a Pendo journey template or from a sequence you describe. A custom journey can include email steps, in-app guide steps, and conditional splits with a yes branch and a no branch, with waits between steps.
In-app guide steps. Add an in-app guide step to a draft journey at any point, write its content, and set how many days it waits before the next step.
Email content. Write the HTML of an email, including personalization and the unsubscribe link. Personalization uses fields that exist in your visitor and account metadata, which Leo or your AI client looks up first. Marketing emails must keep the unsubscribe link.
Subject lines and senders. Set the subject line, sender name, reply-to address, and the field that holds each visitor's email address.
Split rules. Set the yes branch of a conditional split to a saved segment.
Audience. Set the journey audience to a saved segment, and choose whether visitors who leave the segment continue through the journey.
Start date and goal. Set the start date, and choose a Page, Feature, or Track Event as the goal.
Name and description. Set the journey name and description.
Standalone emails. Create a draft marketing or transactional email outside a journey, and write its content. You choose the audience and send time in Orchestrate.

How results are returned

Answers are shaped by how the data is stored, so results can differ from what you see in Orchestrate:

Requests that need a date range accept up to 367 days.
Journey results can be requested without a date range. When you give a range, goal attainment is left out of the answer.
Step results count visitors who entered the journey during the dates you asked for, and events that happened in that period.
Email results can count all activity in the period, or count activity for emails delivered in the period. Open and click rates are most accurate for emails delivered in the period.
Current enrollment is a snapshot of the moment you ask. It takes no date range, so it can differ from step results for the same journey.
Visitor lists return 200 visitors by default and up to 5,000. The answer gives the total number of visitors and says whether the list was shortened. A shortened list is the first part of the full list, not a sample.
Leo and AI clients can't read a conditional split's rules or an email's content back from Orchestrate. Check both in Orchestrate before you schedule.

What you can change by journey status

What Leo and AI clients can change depends on the status of the journey. A journey with a future start date counts as active.

Change	Draft	In review	Scheduled	Active	Paused	Completed
Name and description	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Steps, guide content, and split rules	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
Audience	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes	No
Start date and goal	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No

These rules also apply:

A journey name can be up to 100 characters, and a description up to 280 characters.
An audience and a split rule must be an existing saved segment. The audience can't be set to No one.
Start times fall on a quarter hour, and the subscription time zone applies. The end date, sending days and hours, and throttling setting stay as they are.
A goal must use a Page, Feature, or Track Event from the same application as the journey.
Email content, subject lines, and senders can be changed for HTML editor emails that aren't running. You change emails built with a template or the block builder, emails that send through another provider, and preview text in Orchestrate.

Finish and activate in Orchestrate

You finish and activate every journey in Orchestrate. A journey created by Leo or an AI client arrives as a draft, and it sends nothing until you activate it.

In Orchestrate, you also:

Review split rules and email content, which Leo and AI clients can't read back.
Set custom or compound split rules, the end date, and sending days and hours.
Schedule, activate, pause, resume, disable, or delete a journey.

Connecting steps, third-party content, trigger message advances, and journey work hours settings aren't available through the Pendo MCP server.

Before you begin

You need:

A subscription with Orchestrate. The Orchestrate tools are offered to subscriptions that have it.
Leo, if you use Leo. Leo reads Orchestrate data with no further setting.
Pendo MCP server (read-only tools) turned on, if you connect an AI client. This setting is on by default. An admin can check it in Settings > Subscription settings > AI access.
Pendo MCP server (write tools) turned on, if you want Leo or an AI client to draft or edit journeys and emails. A subscription admin turns it on in the same place. It takes effect when the read-only tools are also on.
Permission to view the application the journey belongs to. With Roles and Permissions v2, writing also requires subscription admin rights or the matching create or edit permission for that application.
A connection to the Pendo MCP server in your AI client, if you use one. Each connection covers one region, so if your subscriptions are in more than one region, connect to each region separately. For setup steps, see Connect to the Pendo MCP server.

Build and check a journey with Leo or an AI client

Describe the journey. Say who it's for, what you want visitors to do, and when it starts. Name the segment, Page, Feature, or Track Event you mean.
Answer the questions. Leo or your AI client asks you to choose when more than one segment, Feature, or journey matches your description.
Open the draft in Orchestrate using the link in the answer. Review the journey map, split rules, email content, and guide content.
Set anything that's left, then schedule or activate the journey in Orchestrate.

After the journey is live, you can ask how it's doing, where visitors leave, and who didn't receive a message.

Tip: Ask Leo or your AI client to list what it can't set or check, and which field or segment it used for each choice.

Example prompts

Replace the names in angle brackets with your own.

Build a journey

Build a draft onboarding journey for visitors who first visited after <date> and haven't used <Feature name>. Send a welcome email, then two days later show an in-app guide that points to <Feature name>. Then split on whether they used it, and send a reminder email to visitors who didn't. Set <Feature name> as the goal, greet visitors by first name with a fallback in the emails, and start the journey on <start date>.
Announce <Feature name> to the <segment name> segment with a draft journey. Visitors who used <related Feature name> in the last seven days get an in-app guide, and everyone else gets an email. Three days after the guide, email visitors who still haven't used <Feature name>.
Build a draft onboarding journey that sends new visitors a welcome email, then uses the <role field> visitor field to split them. Admins get a setup guide, analysts get a reports guide, and everyone else gets a short tips email.
Create a draft marketing email announcing <Feature name>, and write its subject line and body with one call to action. I'll choose the audience and send time in Orchestrate.

Edit a draft

In draft journey <journey name>, add an in-app guide two days after <email name> that shows visitors how to <task>, and write its content.
In draft journey <journey name>, set the split after <step name> so that visitors in the <segment name> segment follow the yes path.
Write a subject line under 50 characters for every email in draft journey <journey name>. Base each one on what the email says. Set the sender name to <sender name>.

Check before you launch

Check whether draft journey <journey name> is ready to launch: audience, start date, goal, and a subject line and sender on every email. Change nothing. List what's missing, and what I need to check in Orchestrate before I turn it on, including split rules, email content, and the sending domain.

Explain and measure

<Visitor ID or email address> says they never got <email name>. Check whether they entered <journey name>, which step they're on, and which emails they received, and explain why in plain words.
Show me how many visitors received each message in <journey name> since it started, and which step loses the most visitors.
For every in-app guide in <journey name>, show how many visitors saw it and how many interacted with it between <start date> and <end date>.
Which active journeys in <application> have the lowest completion rate over the last 90 days?

Troubleshoot Orchestrate tools

No Orchestrate tools are offered. The subscription might not have Orchestrate, or an admin hasn't turned on the Pendo MCP server. Check Settings > Subscription settings > AI access.
Leo reads but doesn't draft. An admin hasn't turned on Pendo MCP server (write tools), or your role doesn't include create or edit permission for that application.
A request is refused even though the tools are listed. If your connection covers several subscriptions, the tools appear when one of them qualifies. Each request is checked against the subscription it targets.
A journey is missing from a list, or is reported as not found. You see the journeys your Pendo permissions let you view, including their dependencies.
A change is refused. Check the status of the journey against the journey status table. Steps, guide content, split rules, the audience, the start date, and the goal are limited after a journey is scheduled or running.
A visitor list looks short. The answer says whether the list was shortened. Ask for a narrower date range or a single step.