![](/sites/default/files/styles/blog_hero_image_mobile/public/media/image/2026-11/dam-mcp-blog-icon%201.png?itok=SYOVMY1d) Image ![Nate Holmes Headshot](/sites/default/files/styles/post_content_attribution_headshot/public/media/image/2026-10/Blue.png?h=3cd06fc8&itok=zpH3Be99) [Nate Holmes](/people/acquians/nate-holmes) Director, Product Marketing Marketing Acquia Bring your DAM into your assistant [Request a demo](https://www.acquia.com/about-us/contact/dam-request-a-demo) Digital Asset Management # How to Connect Your DAM to Your AI Assistant With the Acquia DAM MCP Server Published: November 5, 2026 13 minute read [Share this blog post on LinkedIn ](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https://www.acquia.com/markdownify/node/61866) [Share this blog post on Twitter ]() [Share this blog post via Email ]() Copy Markdown Connect Acquia DAM to your AI assistant with the MCP Server. Find, update, and transform assets in one conversation, under your own permissions. ![](/sites/default/files/styles/blog_hero_image_mobile/public/media/image/2026-11/dam-mcp-blog-icon%201.png?itok=SYOVMY1d) Somewhere in your organization, someone just asked an AI assistant a question they used to ask a coworker. Where's the Q1 marketing plan? What's our return policy? Who owns the vendor contract? If that assistant is connected to your company's docs, wiki, and CRM, it probably answered in seconds. That's changing where work starts. For a growing number of people, the first stop isn't a system or a folder. It's a conversation with Microsoft Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini, grounded in what the company already knows. For marketing, the gap usually shows up right after the first draft: the images and videos. Your assistant can summarize your brand guidelines in three bullet points. It just can't find the approved logo or product image they describe. So people grab the closest image, generate a new one, or leave the conversation to search through the DAM. The Acquia DAM MCP Server, now generally available to all Acquia DAM customers, puts your asset library inside the AI assistant your teams already use. Here's what that makes possible, how it works, and how it stays governed. ## **Find, update, and transform in one conversation** Once Acquia DAM is connected, your assistant can do three kinds of work with your assets: - **Find.** Search assets, preview them, and check details like metadata, release and expiration dates, and embed links. - **Update.** Fix metadata, add or remove tags, rename files, add controlled vocabulary values, and change asset groups and release or expiration dates. - **Transform.** Get resized, cropped, or reformatted image links, including Smart Crop, without touching the original file. It doesn't stop at search. Your assistant can fix the library and prepare assets for each channel, not just find them. Nobody has to learn which tool does what. People describe what they need in plain language, and the assistant picks the right tool. You can even bake using the DAM into repeatable skills, like identifying images and videos as part of creating a blog post. Here's what that looks like for the people who manage the DAM, the people who use it, and the people who fill it. ## **For DAM admins: a co-admin to audit, plan, and fix the library** A useful library isn't built once. It has to change as your business does. A merger, a product launch, or a new region doesn't just bring new assets. It brings new brands to govern, new product lines and markets to support, and new rules about who can use what. So the governance and taxonomy have to change too, and everything already in the library has to catch up. That work competes with everything else on the to-do list. Here's how the AI assistant helps you audit, plan, and fix. ### **Audit: see where the library stands** You can't prioritize gaps you can't see. A bank's DAM admin asks, "Of the assets added this quarter, which business lines have the most missing usage rights?" The assistant groups those assets by business line and returns a scorecard, so the admin knows where to start before the next compliance review. Scoping the audit to a quarter, campaign, or collection keeps the count accurate, since each search returns up to 100 results. The same prompt works for descriptions, product, region, or expiration dates. ### **Plan: agree on the standard before anything changes** Picture a university where admissions, athletics, the medical school, and central marketing all upload to the same DAM. Each department has its own idea of a good file name. One uses Admissions\_CampusTour\_2026-04-12\_014.jpg. Another uses IMG\_4471 final FINAL.jpg. Before renaming anything, the admin asks the assistant to sample file names by department and summarize the patterns. Then: "Propose one naming convention that works across departments, using metadata fields we already have." The assistant checks your metadata schema and drafts a convention, like Department\_Event\_Date. The admin takes it to the departments for sign-off. Once it's agreed, the admin asks, "Show current and proposed names for this semester's Athletics uploads in a table." That table is the change plan. It's also the undo button if a department objects. ### **Fix: make the changes in the same conversation** With the plan approved, the university admin says go. The assistant renames each file, one asset at a time, and logs every change under the admin's name. For large sets, the assistant works in batches of up to 100, so start with one department or date range and work through the rest. Renaming requires rename permission in the DAM, so this stays with the people who should be doing it. The same pattern works for missing fields. A manufacturer launches a new pump line, and some photos were uploaded without the Product Line field. The admin asks, "Which photos for our new X200 pump line are missing the Product Line field? Fix them." The assistant lists every file with the field blank, then sets it on all of them after one approval. Dealers, distributors, and the website now find every current product photo. This pattern already pays off in practice. City Home Furniture connected Acquia DAM to its PIM system using AI. Product image reviews used to be done by eye. Now the team audits the whole library for unsynced images, finds product shots that aren't used in the PIM at all, and catches problems before customers do. The result is about three hours a week back. ([Watch the webinar](https://www.acquia.com/events/webinars/webinar-henry-stewart-optimizing-your-dam-ai-ready-brand)) ## **For marketers: the right assets, already in the draft** Marketers don't want to learn the DAM's filters. They want the right assets, in the thing they're building, now. ### **A campaign kit in one ask** A bank is launching a spring retirement campaign. Its marketer asks, "Pull together everything approved for our spring retirement campaign, with links." The assistant returns email headers, social posts, branch posters, and video, grouped by type, each with a link. Region and language tags come along, so branch teams and agencies get the right versions without digging through folders. ### **A destination guide with images included** Writing the article is half the job. Finding approved, current images and video takes the rest. Picture a hotel group's content team asking, "Draft a fall weekend guide for our lakeside resort, with approved photos and a video from our DAM." The assistant writes the draft, searches the DAM for photos and video of the property, checks that each is released and not expired, and embeds them with DAM links and alt text. Save that as a skill, and it runs the same way every time. A skill is a saved set of instructions your assistant follows on request. Every guide follows your format, and every image is one you're allowed to use. ### **An on-brand sales slide** If your assistant can also read your product guide and brand template, it can combine them with the DAM. A manufacturer's marketer asks, "Find our best X200 product shots and build a dealer sales slide." The assistant finds approved product shots, pulls the headline and benefits from the product guide, and builds the slide in the brand template. The marketer reviews a finished slide instead of a blank one. ## **For creatives: less fetching, more judgment** Creative teams spend a surprising amount of time on work that isn't creative. These examples hand that work to the AI assistant. ### **Check before you create** Teams book new shoots for images they already own, because they can't find them. Before a retailer's creative team plans the spring catalog, someone asks, "Do we have trail running photos we could reuse?" The assistant returns approved photos with previews, only ones that are released and not expired. It can narrow by season, model release, or usage rights. Reuse first, shoot second, and the budget goes to new work. ### **Tidy up after upload** Upload is where metadata quality is won or lost. Picture an in-house studio uploading 300 shots from a product shoot on a Friday afternoon. In one conversation, the photographer asks the assistant to rename the files to the naming convention, look at each image and write alt text, add tags, and set release and expiration dates. Each change is confirmed before it's made. Since searches return up to 100 results and changes run one asset at a time, the assistant works through a shoot that size in batches. Tip: ask the assistant to check your controlled vocabulary first, so it doesn't add "Outdoors" when "Outdoor" already exists. ### **Brief to on-brand ad** Seasonal ads wait in the design queue, even when every piece already exists. A retailer asks, "Build a social ad for our fall trail collection from approved photos, in the style of last season's ads." The assistant searches the DAM for a photo, confirms its usage rights and expiration date, uses last season's campaign ads in the DAM as style references, and builds a first draft. Smart Crop then produces every channel size from the same photo. The creative team refines a near-final draft instead of starting from nothing. ## **Turn a PDF into a web page with Acquia DAM and Acquia Source CMS** Your brand guide PDF has been emailed hundreds of times. It has been read slightly fewer times than that. Acquia Source CMS has its own MCP server. Connect it and the Acquia DAM MCP Server to the same assistant, and the assistant can work across both. Ask it to turn that static PDF into a dynamic, mobile-responsive brand guide. It reads the PDF, builds a page draft from your site's Drupal Canvas components, and pulls approved logos, images, and links from your DAM. A page is created as a draft, so a person reviews it before anything publishes. This works today. The assistant builds from your site's existing components, and it can create new ones when a page needs something your library doesn't have yet. The work shifts from copying content between systems to reviewing and tweaking pages that are nearly done. ## **How it works** MCP, or Model Context Protocol, is an open standard that lets AI assistants use tools in other systems. The Acquia DAM MCP Server is a set of those tools, built by Acquia and running on your own DAM URL. Your MCP server URL is your DAM URL with /mcp at the end, like https://yourcompany.acquiadam.com/mcp. Each person connects it in their assistant, signs in with their own Acquia DAM credentials, and clicks Allow. There's no third-party service or separate API key in between. From then on, the assistant picks the right tool for whatever they ask. Type Tools Read Search assets, get asset details, list metadata fields Update Update metadata, add or remove tags, rename assets, add controlled vocabulary values, update security (asset groups, release and expiration dates) Transform Build resized, cropped, reformatted, or Smart Crop image links This tool set will keep growing, with capabilities like Insights for analysis on the list. More on where it's headed. Transformed links create a new delivery URL. The original file is never touched. It works with any AI assistant that supports custom MCP servers with OAuth, including Claude, Microsoft Copilot Studio, ChatGPT, Gemini Enterprise, and GitHub Copilot. Most assistants need a paid or enterprise plan to add custom connectors, and your IT or AI admin may need to set it up. ## **The questions IT will ask (and the answers)** Giving an AI assistant write access to your DAM should raise a few eyebrows. Here's what keeps you in control. **Can the assistant do more than I can?** No. It signs in as you and has exactly your DAM permissions, the same as the DAM interface and the API. Permission changes in the DAM apply on the next request, with no need to reconnect. **Will it change things without asking?** Every tool that changes data is flagged as hard to undo, so most assistants ask you to confirm first. Updates run one asset at a time, and you can tell it to stop at any point. **Can I see what changed?** Yes. Changes show in asset history under your name, with the method listed as API edit. **Can it delete assets?** No, and that's by design. There is no delete tool, so a misread prompt can't remove anything from your library. Tags are added and removed one at a time, so existing tags are never wiped. **How do I make a change easy to undo?** Ask the assistant to show current values in a table before it changes anything. If you need to roll back, it can put them back. **Can we limit which tools or AI clients connect?** Not per tool or per client today. Administrators can turn the MCP Server off entirely, and your assistant's own admin settings may let you turn off specific tools. **Who supports it when something goes wrong?** Acquia supports the MCP Server and its tools. Your AI vendor supports the assistant itself. There's also a governance case for turning it on. People are already using AI with assets pulled from shared drives and downloads. The MCP Server gives them a governed path to approved assets instead. ## **Where it's headed: UI, then API, then MCP** Acquia DAM has followed a simple principle for years: if you can do it in the UI, you should be able to do it with the API. MCP is the next step in that line. Over time, what you can do with the API should translate into what you can do by asking your assistant. We aren't there yet. Today the MCP Server covers finding, updating, and transforming assets, and searches return up to 100 results at a time. Uploading and deleting assets aren't available through MCP, and neither are DAM Entries, Workflow, Templates, Video Creator, Portals, or user and admin data. We'll keep building out what the MCP Server can do. Capabilities like Insights, so your assistant can help analyze how assets are performing, are on the list. ## **Get started in three steps** 1. **Turn it on.** An Acquia DAM administrator opens the Admin menu, selects Global features, and enables the MCP Server toggle. Your Acquia CSM can walk you through it. 2. **Connect your assistant.** Add your DAM URL plus /mcp as a custom connector with OAuth, then sign in and click Allow. Check with your IT or AI admin first, since custom connectors often need their approval. 3. **Start small.** Pick one prompt from this post and run it on your own library. When you catch yourself typing the same prompt twice, save it as a skill. The MCP Server is generally available to all Acquia DAM customers, and there's no fee to turn it on. It shares your REST API usage limits, and AI token usage is managed in your assistant. Full setup details are in the [MCP Server for Acquia DAM documentation](https://docs.acquia.com/acquia-dam/mcp-server-acquia-dam). ## **What's next: Acquia AI** Everything in this post works today with the AI assistant you already use. Acquia AI is a second path: governed agents built into Acquia Source. For Acquia DAM, agents search the asset library, recommend approved assets based on the content being created, and help keep the library organized. A person approves before anything ships, and every action is logged. Acquia AI is in Limited Availability for new Acquia DAM customers, with general availability coming soon. Acquia DAM in Acquia Source is coming soon too. ## **Start with one question** You don't need a strategy deck to try this. Turn on the MCP Server, connect one assistant, and give one team one prompt from this post. See what comes back. The next time someone on your team posts "Do we have a photo of...?" in the group chat, they can ask their assistant instead. It'll answer faster, and it won't react with a passive-aggressive upside-down smiley face. Image ![Nate Holmes Headshot](/sites/default/files/styles/post_content_attribution_headshot/public/media/image/2026-10/Blue.png?h=3cd06fc8&itok=zpH3Be99) [Nate Holmes](/people/acquians/nate-holmes) Director, Product Marketing Marketing Acquia Nate Holmes is a product marketing leader at Acquia with over a decade of experience in marketing and content strategy. He specializes in DAM, AI for content, and website optimization to help brands streamline content operations and drive marketing ROI. [Share this blog post on LinkedIn ](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https://www.acquia.com/markdownify/node/61866) [Share this blog post on Twitter ]() [Share this blog post via Email ]() Copy Markdown ## Keep Reading [View More Resources](/resources) [Image ![](/sites/default/files/styles/card_tablet/public/media/image/2026-11/dam-laptop-icon-8px.png?h=10d202d3&itok=4rYJuW__) Blog Article 8 min ###### Stop Turning On AI Features and Fix Your DAM First Auto-tagging, facial recognition, video transcription — AI DAM features only work when your foundation is clean. Learn the three kinds of AI in your DAM world and how to use them well. 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