Docs

Quickstart

Three steps: put the add-in in Word, connect an agent, make an edit. Optional fourth: register the relay with Microsoft Agent 365 so admins can approve and observe it from the Microsoft 365 admin center.

1. Install the add-in

Tenant-wide (recommended)

1. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, open Settings → Integrated apps and choose Get apps.
2. Search for Redtrail on the Microsoft Marketplace and deploy it to the Entra groups that should have seats. Centralized Deployment pushes it to Word on Windows, Mac and the web; users see it under Home → Add-ins the next time Word starts.
3. Grant tenant-wide consent for the Redtrail Entra app when prompted. The requested delegated scopes are openid profile email.

Sideload for a trial

1. Download the manifest from https://redtrail.ai/addin/manifest.xml.
2. Word on the web: Home → Add-ins → More add-ins → My add-ins → Upload my add-in.
3. Word for Windows: share the manifest from a network folder and add it as a trusted catalog (File → Options → Trust Center → Trusted Add-in Catalogs), then Insert → My Add-ins → Shared folder.
4. Word for Mac: copy the manifest into ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word/Data/Documents/wef/ and restart Word.

Open any document from SharePoint or OneDrive, click Redtrail on the ribbon, and confirm the task pane shows Connected with your name. The add-in signs in silently with your Microsoft 365 identity.

2. Connect an agent

Claude Code (one command)

claude plugin install Redtrail

The plugin adds the MCP connection, a skill that teaches the agent document etiquette (anchor on content controls, keep tracked changes on, comment before rewriting, read narrowly), and later the local end-to-end server. On first use a browser window opens for the OAuth sign-in; use the same Microsoft 365 account that is signed in to Word. The grant is named after your machine and appears in the task pane and the audit log.

Claude Desktop and Cowork

Install the Redtrail.mcpb bundle from the download page, or add the remote connector below.

Any other MCP client: remote connector

https://redtrail.ai/mcp

Add this as a remote MCP server (Streamable HTTP, OAuth). Claude.ai, mobile, Cursor, VS Code and Copilot Studio all accept a remote MCP URL and will complete the OAuth sign-in on first connection.

3. Make the first edit

With the document open in Word and the task pane connected, ask the agent something concrete:

Read section 2.3 of the open document, then tighten the power budget
sentence so it states the average and peak limits separately.
Leave a comment explaining the change.

The agent calls doc_outline and doc_read (reads are answered immediately), then doc_replace and doc_comment. If change tracking is on and you have enabled Auto-apply in the task pane, the writes land as tracked changes at once. Otherwise they appear as a pending wave in the task pane; click Apply to apply the wave, or open it to apply, skip or jump to each change.

4. Register with Microsoft Agent 365 (optional)

Tenants using Agent 365 can register the Redtrail relay as a bring-your-own MCP server. Approval then happens in the Microsoft 365 admin center, and tool invocations appear in Agent 365 observability. From a machine with the Agent 365 CLI and an az login session for your tenant:

a365 develop-mcp register-external-mcp-server \
  --server-name ext_redtrail \
  --server-url https://redtrail.ai/mcp \
  --auth-type ExternalOAuth \
  --publisher "EZBLOCK INC" \
  --description "Agent edits to Word documents as tracked changes, with change history" \
  --idp-authorization-url https://redtrail.ai/oauth/authorize \
  --idp-token-url https://redtrail.ai/oauth/token \
  --idp-scopes "docs.read docs.write history.read" \
  --idp-client-id "<client id from your Redtrail admin console>" \
  --idp-client-secret "<client secret>" \
  --tools doc_list,doc_outline,doc_read,doc_search,doc_replace,doc_insert,doc_comment,doc_reply,doc_resolve,doc_changes,doc_accept,doc_reject,doc_queue_status,doc_history_log,doc_history_show,doc_history_blame,doc_history_revert,doc_history_replay

1. The command creates the Entra app registrations the platform needs and prints a redirect URI. Add that URI to the OAuth client in your Redtrail admin console.
2. Registration does not approve the server. Ask a tenant administrator to approve it under Agents → Requested in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Until then the server is unavailable to agents.
3. Server names must start with ext_ and be at most 20 characters; tool names must match the list above exactly.

Supported client surfaces for approved servers include Copilot Studio, Visual Studio Code, Claude Code and GitHub Copilot CLI. The bring-your-own MCP server feature is in preview; check Microsoft's documentation for the current list.

Tool reference

Anchors are never paragraph indices. An anchor is a content-control tag, a heading path, a search hit with an occurrence index and context hash, a comment id or a tracked-change id. Every write re-resolves its anchor when it runs and verifies the expected text first; a mismatch is reported as a conflict, never applied silently.

Document etiquette for agents

The plugin ships these as a skill. If you use another client, put them in your agent's instructions:

• Read narrowly: doc_outline first, then doc_read on the section you need.
• Anchor on content controls when they exist; otherwise heading paths; search hits last.
• Always pass the exact text you expect to replace. If the tool reports a conflict, re-read and retry; never widen the anchor to force it.
• Comment before rewriting anything longer than a sentence.
• Keep tracked changes on. Do not accept your own changes.
• After a wave of writes, call doc_queue_status before assuming they landed.