Ailimu.

The setup wizard

Four steps: Connect → Tables → Scripts → Publish. The left-hand column lists every FileMaker file on this connector; the one you are working in expands to show those four steps, so you can move between files without going back to the start. New connection at the foot of that list adds another, and All connections returns to the cards.

If you leave a connection with changes you have not published, Ailimu asks first.

Nothing is exposed until you publish. Read-only stays on unless you turn it off, using the switch under that connection's steps: it applies to that connection alone, not to the whole connector.

Connections

The wizard opens on a list of your FileMaker files. One connector can serve several, each with its own address and its own token, so giving somebody access to one file does not give them the others.

Each card shows what is exposed, the endpoint, and how stale the schema is.

1 · Connect

Host, file, and a display name. After the host is known the wizard lists the files on that server, so pick rather than type.

Run scripts from is for solutions split into a data file and an interface file: a very common FileMaker arrangement where the tables live in one and the business scripts in another. Set it and tables come from the first file while scripts, and the layouts they run against, come from the second. One profile, one endpoint, one token.

If a script you expect is absent from the list, this is almost always the reason. On one production instance the data file held 107 scripts, all of them infrastructure, while the interface file held 831, including every script the business actually uses.

Press Read the schema. On a large file expect roughly seven seconds: the schema itself, the row counts, and the script and layout lists.

2 · Tables

The left sidebar groups every table by what Ailimu worked out it is, with the groups collapsed so a file with 231 entity sets does not arrive as a wall:

Group What it means
Core records Things the business has: customers, employees, trips.
Transactions Dated lines that belong to something: invoices, segments, payments.
Lookups and pick lists Short reference lists behind a dropdown.
Logs and history Audit trails and event logs.
Join tables Links between two other tables, and little else.
Settings Constants and configuration.
Unclassified Nothing in the names, counts or links said anything useful.

Suggest a starting set picks core records and transactions, which is what most questions are about. A count badge turns blue on any group you have ticked from, so you can see where your choices are with everything collapsed.

FileMaker adds a table to its relationship graph once per path used to reach it, and OData exposes every occurrence. Those copies hold identical records, so publishing several would make several tools over one set of data. Ailimu keeps the plainest name and hides the rest behind show repeated tables, under Filters above the table list.

How it starts

The step opens on one question: set it up for me, or I'll choose myself.

The first ticks the largest few tables that look like core records and transactions and gives each its Essentials fields, so you arrive at a working setup and correct it rather than build one. The second exposes nothing until you say so. Neither publishes anything.

That answer is also the rule for every table you open afterwards, and it lives in the rail as New tables: fill in for me / start empty, so you can change your mind at any point. A table Ailimu filled in for you says so, and offers an undo; a table you have edited by hand is never overwritten.

One table at a time

Selecting a table splits the screen in three: the table list stays on the left, a rail on the right holds everything about the table, and the middle column shows the thing you are actually building.

That middle column starts with the tools this table will become:

get_TripSegments        returns 54 fields
find_TripSegments       6 parameters
                        a search returns those 7 fields; fields: asks for more
describe_TripSegments   tells the assistant what this table is

Worth reading twice: the fields you can filter by are also the fields a search hands back. That is how the generated tool works and it used to be invisible. get_ returns everything you exposed; a search returns the short list, and the assistant can ask for more by name.

Below that are the fields you have exposed, as chips grouped under their headings. A chip is just the field name until you hover it or reach it with the keyboard, which reveals two markers and a remove:

Click the chip's name for what it is: the FileMaker field name, its type, any comment, its groups, and a value or two from the sample. That panel only tells; everything that changes a field is on the chip itself.

A production table carries 209 fields and Essentials leaves 54. As rows that was a wall. As chips it is about six lines.

Adding fields

＋ Add fields opens the full list, and it is the only place that list exists, because it is somewhere you go on purpose. It opens with the search box focused; type and it filters as you go.

Each field carries two tags, and the chips along the top filter by them:

Columns that held nothing in any sampled row are counted rather than listed — on one 209-field table that was 82 of them — with a link to show them anyway. Fields already exposed stay in the list, ticked, so this is also how you review.

Fewer search fields make a better tool. One production table advertised 97 search parameters, 54 of them calculation fields. Calculations, summaries and globals are excluded from search by default, identified from FileMaker's own metadata rather than any naming convention. Essentials never ticks Totals or Shared value fields, and reads calculated fields without making them searchable.

Sampling

Opening a table reads a small sample of its rows in the background. Two things come back:

Sampled values are shown to you and then discarded. They are never written to the config or the cache. Use Sample ticked, in the ... menu at the foot of the table list, to do the tables you have chosen in one go, and note that a table you have not opened has not been sampled: no marks means unknown, not clean.

Anything you tick by hand always wins over a later sample.

3 · Scripts

Optional, and the part that deserves care. A script can do anything the account is allowed to do, including delete records. FileMaker exposes a script's name and nothing else, not its body, not its parameters, so every label here is read off the name and is a guess. Expose only scripts you have read.

Layout context is the layout a script runs against, which decides what table and found set it sees. Get it wrong and the script still runs, just somewhere else, so Ailimu will not publish a ticked script until you have chosen one. It sits folded to a single line at the top of the step, showing what the default currently is; change opens the layout list. It stays open while nothing is chosen, and while you are picking a layout for one script rather than all of them. Most files run everything from a single blank or utility layout: set it as the default and override only the exceptions.

Ailimu reads what it can from the name:

Shown Means
looks destructive / changes data / sends or prints / read-only / navigation A guess from the verb in the name. Navigation and destructive ones are hidden by default.
server script PSOS_ or SVR_. Perform Script On Server behaves differently and some will not run through the Data API at all.
duplicate name Two scripts share this name. FileMaker's run-by-name cannot say which, so it cannot be exposed.

Where a file names its parameters: Save Customs Documents {tripID;serial;docType} : they are filled in for you, along with a tool name with the developer prefix and the parameter block stripped. All editable, under Parameters in the ticked script, which opens itself when there is anything to show and stays shut for the majority of scripts that take nothing.

4 · Publish

Publishing writes your choices and the tools go live immediately, with no restart. You get the endpoint, the token and the command to paste into Claude.

An agent that is already connected will not see the change. A client reads the tool list once, when it connects. Start a new session after republishing; you do not need to re-run the setup command.