Claude and FileMaker: what works and what to expect

You can ask Claude questions about the data in your FileMaker solution and get answers from the live file. It works well, with some limits that are worth knowing before you start. This guide covers which Claude to use, what Claude can and cannot do with your data, and what you need in place.

What you need

• FileMaker Server that you can reach, with the OData API enabled. Scripts use the Data API. FileMaker Cloud is not supported yet.
• A FileMaker account for Ailimu to sign in as. Its privilege set decides what it can see, so give it only what Claude should reach.
• A machine to run Ailimu on: one Docker container, on your own network or a server you control.
• Claude: Claude Desktop or Claude Code (see the next section).

Ailimu sits between the two. It reads your file's structure, lets you choose which tables and fields Claude may use, and turns those choices into the tools Claude calls. Connect Claude to your FileMaker data walks through it in about ten minutes.

Which Claude works

If you want the terminal, see Use Claude Code with FileMaker.

What Claude can do

• Look up a record by its ID, and read the fields you allowed.
• Search a table by the fields you allowed, with several conditions, and list what matches.
• Describe a table, so it knows what each field holds before it searches.
• Work out answers from what it reads: totals, comparisons and rankings, with the figures it used shown in the reply.
• Change a record, if you allow it. Writes are off until you turn them on for a table and switch off read-only. Claude can only update an existing record, one at a time. There is no tool to create or delete a record.
• Run a FileMaker script, if you choose to expose it. Scripts count as writes, so they are off while read-only is on. A script can do anything the script itself does, so expose only ones you trust.

What Claude cannot do

• See what you did not expose. A table, field or script you left unticked does not exist as far as Claude is concerned, however it is asked.
• Go past FileMaker's own security. Ailimu signs in as the account you gave it, and that account's privilege set still applies.
• Read an entire large table at once. See the limits below.
• Be certain. Claude can misread a field or pick the wrong table. Clear field names help. For the first answers, compare them with a report you trust.

Limits to expect

Claude works from rows that tools return, and the tools keep each reply to a size that an assistant can use well:

• A search returns 25 rows unless Claude asks for more, up to 500.
• A reply is capped at about 40 KB. If a result is too big, whole rows are dropped and the reply says how many.
• Long text is clipped at 500 characters in a search. The full text is one lookup away.

In practice this means Claude is excellent at questions that narrow quickly: "which invoices are overdue by more than 30 days?" or "what did this customer order last quarter?". It is slower at questions that need a sum over hundreds of thousands of rows, because it has to read the rows to add them up. For those, build the figure in FileMaker, as a calculation or a summary, and let Claude read that. The limits are settings you can change; see the reference.

What reaches the AI

When Claude answers, it reads the rows its tools return, so those rows are sent to the AI provider as part of the conversation. Ailimu itself runs on your server and does not send your data anywhere else. That is why choosing fields matters: leave out anything the question does not need. See what leaves your server.

A sensible first week

1. Start read-only, with the two or three tables people ask about most.
2. Tick only the fields you would be happy to read aloud in a meeting.
3. Ask questions you already know the answer to, and compare.
4. Look at Activity in the wizard to see what Claude asked of the file.
5. Add more tables, or turn on a write, only once the answers are right.

Next

• Connect Claude to your FileMaker data
• Use Claude Code with FileMaker
• Give your team AI access to FileMaker, safely