How to connect Nous Portal to LinkedIn, step by step

What you need

• A Finchreach account (sign in at finchreach.com) and the LinkedIn account you want Nous Portal to work on.
• An MCP client to run Nous Portal in: Hermes Agent.
• About five minutes.

Step 1: Create a Finchreach API key

1. Sign in at finchreach.com and open API keys.
2. Create a key and name it after the tool, for example “Nous Portal”.
3. Copy it right away: it starts with lk_ and is shown only once.

Step 2: Connect your LinkedIn account

1. Open Accounts and click to connect LinkedIn.
2. Follow the steps until the account shows as connected.

Approval mode is on by default: nothing the assistant drafts reaches LinkedIn until you approve it.

Step 3: Run Nous Portal in an MCP client and add Finchreach

Nous Portal doesn’t connect to MCP servers itself, so the client you run it in does. Not applicable to the Portal itself; Hermes Agent sends the Finchreach key.

1. Install Hermes Agent and sign in with your Portal account: hermes setup --portal.
2. Add Finchreach to Hermes (see the Hermes Agent guide), so the Portal models can call the LinkedIn tools.

mcp_servers:
  finchreach:
    url: "https://mcp.finchreach.com/mcp"
    headers:
      Authorization: "Bearer lk_YOUR_KEY"

Replace lk_YOUR_KEY with your key. Keep the key out of shared files and repos; where Nous Portal can read it from an environment variable, prefer that.

Client guides with the exact config:

• Hermes Agent (connects directly)

Step 4: Test the connection

In the client you connected, start with a read:

Ask your assistant“List my connected LinkedIn accounts, then summarize my five latest notifications.”

You should see calls to linkedin_list_accounts and linkedin_get_notifications. Then try a write, which goes to your approval queue instead of LinkedIn:

Ask your assistant“Draft a short LinkedIn post saying I’m trying a new AI assistant workflow. Submit it for my approval.”

Step 5: Approve or reject it in Finchreach

1. Open Approvals. The draft is there with its exact text and the account it would go out from.
2. Approve it to publish, or reject it (reject the test post if you don’t want it live).
3. The assistant can check the result with linkedin_get_action: pending, approved, rejected, executed, failed or expired.

Troubleshooting

• If you only use the Portal’s chat, there is nowhere to add an MCP server: use Hermes Agent.
• 401 or “unauthorized”: the key is wrong, revoked or missing its prefix. Finchreach accepts Authorization: Bearer lk_… or X-API-Key: lk_…; check for a missing Bearer , quotes or a trailing space.
• A tool is missing: the key’s permissions don’t include it. Create a key with the permissions you need under API keys.
• “No LinkedIn account”: connect one under Accounts, or reconnect it if its session expired.
• A post or message “didn’t go out”: it is probably still waiting under Approvals. Writes run only after you approve them.

Still stuck? Compare your setup with Nous Portal’s documentation, checked on 2026-10-28; client screens change often.

What to ask it next

Ask your assistant“Using a Hermes model, draft a LinkedIn post about our research release.”

Ask your assistant“Summarize my LinkedIn notifications and messages for today.”

Ask your assistant“Search LinkedIn for researchers posting about reasoning models.”

More ideas on the Nous Portal integration page.

Common questions