An AI assistant connected to your data room can do exactly what its tools allow, and nothing more. In 99 Data Rooms that is a fixed set of tools, grouped into reading, adding and organising, and every one runs with your own permissions in the rooms you chose when you connected it. This guide lists them all, and the things no tool does.
How the assistant gets in
The assistant connects over the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open standard for letting an AI assistant call another product's tools. You add our server to the assistant, sign in with your 99 Data Rooms email and a one-time code, and tick the rooms it may reach. It works where the room owner is on Pro (£49/mo) or Business and the room's AI access switch is on. Our step-by-step guide to connecting Claude to your data room covers the setup.
Reading: the default permission
| What you ask | What the assistant can do |
|---|---|
| Which rooms and documents are there? | List the rooms you chose and the documents in each, and tell you which account it is connected as |
| What does this document say? | Read a document, or up to ten at once. Text documents come back as text; a PDF, Office file or image comes back as a short-lived download link, only if you are allowed to download it |
| Where is the clause about X? | Search the text inside PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, RTF, CSV and text documents, across the rooms you chose |
| What changed between drafts? | List a document's versions, read an earlier one, and compare two versions paragraph by paragraph |
| What are people asking? | Read the room's Q&A threads, including internal notes, which it labels as internal. It never sees the asker's email |
| Is anyone looking? | See a room's viewing totals, which name nobody |
| Who has this been shared with? | List a room's share links and, for links you created, who each went to by the label you gave them, and when each last opened it. Never their email addresses, link addresses or access tokens |
| How much space is left? | Read the room's storage figures, if you own the room |
Search reads the text extracted when a document was last uploaded or saved. A scanned PDF with no text layer has no text to search, so it will not be found by its contents.
Two more read tools are worth knowing. With a separate permission, the assistant can search and read your own documents that sit in no room, if you yourself are on Pro or Business. And when you use Send to your assistant in the app, it can pick up the documents you selected, which are kept for seven days and visible only to you. The app cannot start the assistant for you; you ask it to look.
Adding: only if you grant it
- Create a text document in Markdown, HTML or plain text, up to 1 MiB, in a room where you may add documents.
- Update a text document. Each update keeps the earlier version, and an update based on an out-of-date copy is refused.
- Upload a file, such as a PDF, a Word, Excel or PowerPoint file, RTF or CSV, up to 100 MB. Uploading anything other than a text document is for the room owner.
- Create a new room in your personal workspace. The current connection cannot reach it until you connect again and tick it.
- Save a draft answer to a Q&A question. It is a draft only: it notifies nobody, and only you can publish it, in the app.
Organising: also only if you grant it
- Create a folder in a room.
- Move documents between folders. A move either happens in full or not at all, and nothing is deleted.
- Rename a document. Only its display name changes, and you can rename it back.
What no assistant can do
- Delete or archive a document or a room.
- Share a document, issue a link or change who can see anything.
- Publish a Q&A answer or reply to a viewer.
- Send a document for signature, or chase a signer.
- Draft a contract from our clause library. That is Draft an agreement, in the Legal Hub.
- Track contract renewals or set reminders.
- See a viewer's email address or location, or how long each person read each page. Viewer-level analytics stay in the app.
- Reach a room you did not tick when you connected, or any room you could not open yourself.
The assistant can still write words of its own, a summary or a first-pass answer, and save them as a text document or a draft Q&A answer. That writing is your assistant's, not our clause library's, and it uses no Legal credits.
When asking is faster than clicking
- Finding a clause across a due diligence room: one question searches every document you chose, where clicking means opening files one by one.
- Comparing drafts: ask what changed between the last two versions of a document and get the changed paragraphs.
- Preparing Q&A answers: let the assistant read the question and the relevant documents and save a draft, then check and publish it yourself.
- Tidying a room: ask it to create folders and move documents into them, and every move is all or nothing.
The safeguards
- Every call runs as you, under your own permissions in each room.
- Every call is written to an audit log the room owner can read, and a change is refused if its log entry cannot be written.
- Each room has its own AI access switch, controlled by its owner; new rooms start with it off.
- You can revoke the connection in Settings, Connected apps.
- Document contents go to your own AI provider under your agreement with them. Our Data Processing Addendum explains this.
- Document text is labelled as untrusted for the assistant, because a document can contain instructions aimed at it. No one can promise to prevent that, so check what the assistant proposes before acting on it.
Frequently asked questions
Can the assistant delete my documents? No. There is no delete or archive tool. The only changes it can make to existing documents are moving and renaming them, which can be undone, and, with the add permission, saving a new version of a text document, which keeps the earlier one.
Can it tell me who opened my pitch deck? Partly. For links you sent to named recipients, it can say which recipient, by the label you gave them, has opened the link and when. It never sees email addresses or locations, and page-by-page reading for each viewer stays in the room's analytics in the app.
Does using the assistant cost Legal credits? No. Its tools use none. They have usage limits per connection and per person instead.
Which assistants can connect? Claude, Claude Desktop, Claude Code and ChatGPT, and other MCP clients that sign in through a local address on your own computer. The AI assistants page has the setup for each.
Try it on one room first
Connect your assistant to a single room with read permission only, ask it a few questions you already know the answers to, and widen from there. The AI assistants page lists every tool in one place, and pricing shows which plans include assistant access.
Sources
- Model Context Protocol, specification: tools, https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2025-06-18/server/tools
Our prices on this page are UK prices in GBP and include VAT where it applies. Checkout shows the price for your country, and any tax added to it.