Your help center lives in Notion, so every article your assistant writes has to be written there. That only works if HelpKit has access to your Notion pages. This article shows you how to check whether you already granted it, and how to grant it if you have not. It takes about a minute, and nothing you have already published changes.
Why this step exists
Reading and writing come from two different places.
Reading your analytics, your search insights, your feedback and your live articles works straight away, because that information already sits in HelpKit.
Writing does not. Creating a draft, editing an article, adding a category: all of that happens inside your own Notion workspace, and HelpKit can only reach the pages you have shared with it. If those pages have not been shared, your assistant will tell you so and refuse the write rather than pretending it worked.
First, check whether you already did this
Open your MCP settings. Click MCP in the top bar of your dashboard, or open the account menu at the top right, go to Account & Billing settings, and pick the MCP tab.
Look at the panel on the left:
- A green line reading "Notion connected. Reading and drafting both work." You are done. Go ahead and connect your AI tool.
- An amber box reading "Connect Notion before you start." Follow the steps below.
Seeing the amber box is completely normal, and it is not a sign that anything is broken. Help centers that have been running for a while were set up before this connection existed, so most of them need it once. If you created your help center recently, you almost certainly granted access during setup and you will see the green line instead.
You can also just ask your assistant "check my HelpKit setup status" once it is connected, and it will tell you the same thing.
Granting access
1. Click Connect Notion. The button sits in the amber box in Account Settings → MCP. Notion opens and asks how you would like to share.
2. Choose "Select pages to share with HelpKit". Notion offers two options. The other one, "Use a template provided by the developer", creates a brand new empty page in your workspace, which is not what you want: your help center already exists. Pick the sharing option, then click Select pages to access.
3. Open the dropdown and choose "Add pages and databases". This is how you search your own workspace rather than scrolling a short list.
4. Search for your help center and pick the root page. The root page is the top page your help center is built from, the one holding your categories. Everything inside it comes along automatically, so there is no need to tick individual categories or articles.
5. Click Allow access. Notion sends you back to HelpKit, and the panel turns green.
Not sure which page is your root page? It is the same page you originally connected when you created your help center.
Adding a page later, from Notion
You can grant access from the Notion side at any time, which is handy if you add a page after the fact.
Open the page in Notion, click the ••• menu at the top right, choose Connections, then Add connections, and pick HelpKit. That grants access to the page and everything inside it. Nothing on your live site changes.
If you run several projects, languages or versions
Access is granted per page, not per account, so a second project or an extra language needs its own grant. This trips people up because reading keeps working perfectly in the meantime.
What happens if you skip this
Nothing breaks and nothing is at risk. Your assistant can still read your help center and all of your insights, so analytics questions, article reviews and content audits all work.
What it cannot do is write. Every attempt to create a draft, edit an article or add a category comes back refused, with an explanation of what is missing. Come back to this page when you want that part.
Next
With Notion connected, all that is left is pointing your AI tool at HelpKit:
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