Connect your Garmin to Claude in two minutes

No coding needed. If you're a developer who wants Garmin data in your own app, see Build with Garmin data instead.

If you wear a Garmin watch, you have months or years of data about your sleep, heart rate, recovery and training sitting in the Garmin Connect app. It's all there, but asking it a simple question, like "Am I sleeping worse since I started marathon training?", means a lot of tapping through charts.

This series is about asking that question in plain words instead, using Claude and a free Garmin connector I built. You don't need to be a programmer, and there's nothing to install.

A real answer from the connector. The numbers have been changed for privacy.

A quick but important note: this connector is unofficial. It isn't made by Garmin or by Anthropic. It's open source, and it talks to Garmin the same way the Garmin Connect app does.

You add it once on the web, and it then follows your Claude account to your phone and computer.

1. Go to claude.ai and click Customize in the left sidebar, then Connectors.

2. Click Add at the top right, then Add custom connector.

3. Name it Garmin, and paste this address into MCP server URL:

https://garmin.ficdev.xyz/mcp Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

If you don't see Add custom connector, custom connectors may not be available on your Claude plan, or your organisation's admin may have turned them off. Claude's help center lists which plans include them.

A Garmin sign-in window opens. Enter the email and password you use for Garmin Connect.

When you've signed in, the window sends you back to Claude, and the connector shows a tick in your list:

Using the Claude phone app? You don't need to do anything there. Once the connector is on your account, the app picks it up automatically. The same goes for Claude Desktop.

How did I sleep this week compared with last week?

Claude works out which Garmin data it needs, fetches it and answers. Above the answer you'll see a small line like "used Garmin MCP integration". Click it to see exactly what it did: here it looked up the right tool, then called getSleepDaily for the two weeks.

This is worth a look now and then. It shows you which dates Claude actually asked for, so you can tell a careful answer from a guess.

The first time, Claude may ask your permission to use the connector. You can allow it once, or always.

Plain questions work best. You don't need to know what any of the Garmin data is called. Follow-up questions work too: "Why do you think Tuesday was so bad?"

This is your health data, so here's exactly what happens to it.

What Claude can do. Through the connector, Claude can read your Garmin data, and it can also save some things for you: workouts, weigh-ins, and changes like renaming an activity. Anything that deletes or overwrites data is marked as destructive, so Claude asks you before doing it. You'll see the workout features in Part 3.

What Claude sees. The data the connector fetches becomes part of your conversation, the same as anything you paste into a chat. How Claude handles conversations is covered by Anthropic's privacy policy.

The connector's full privacy policy states all of this as facts about the code, which is open source.

To end the session on Garmin's side as well, change your Garmin password.

"Sign-in failed" or "too many attempts." Garmin limits how often you can sign in. Wait 15 minutes and try again. You only need to sign in once; after that the connection keeps itself alive as long as you use it at least once a month.

Claude says there's no data. It can only see what your watch recorded and synced to Garmin Connect. A night you didn't wear the watch, or a feature your watch doesn't have (some don't measure HRV), shows up as no data.

Claude didn't use Garmin at all. Start your question with "From my Garmin data, …", or check that the connector is switched on in the chat's tools menu.

In Part 2 we'll go deeper on asking questions: comparing weeks and months, checking whether you're recovering well, reading race predictions sensibly, and how to tell when Claude's answer is solid and when it's guessing.

What was the first thing you asked? Tell me in the comments. I collect good questions for the next post.