The most common question I get about connecting a restaurant POS to AI is some version of "I tried to get API access and could not." Almost every time, the person was asking for the wrong thing.
There are two different programs, and the names do not make the difference super obvious.
What is the difference between the Partner API and the Standard API?
The Partner API is for companies building software to sell to other restaurants. It involves an application, a review, and a wait. If you are one operator who wants to look at your own numbers, this is not your path, and asking for it generically is how people end up routed into it and stuck.
The Standard API is Toast letting you read your own restaurant's data. On most subscription levels it is a self serve page. In Toast Web, search "API access" and look for Manage Credentials. You create the credential, pick your scopes, and you are done in about ten minutes.
Mine is read only across Labor, Orders, Menus, Configuration, Restaurants, Cash Management and Stock. Read only is the right posture to start from. It means nothing you or your AI does can change anything in your POS, which removes the entire category of worry about letting a model near live systems.
Toast developer portal
Search "Toast developer portal" and you land on a sign-in page for integration partners. Toast creates those accounts during partner onboarding, for companies selling software to other restaurants. You will not get one for your own restaurant, and you do not need one.
The page you want lives inside Toast Web. Toast calls it Manage credentials.
On your screen: Toast Web
Go to Integrations, then Toast API access, then Manage credentials. Typing "API access" into the search bar at the top gets you to the same page.
Click the arrow on the Create new credentials button and pick Standard API.
On the New Credentials page, name the credential. Pick something you'll recognize a year from now.
Select every read scope on offer. Adding one later means a second trip through this page.
Pick your locations, click Apply, then Confirm.
You land on the Credentials page. Copy the Client ID. Copy the client secret and save it now; Toast shows it once.
If the page is there, you're done in about ten minutes.
Two things gate it. Your Toast subscription has to include Restaurant Management Suite Essentials or higher, and your login needs the Manage Integrations permission, listed as 8.4 under Employee management. A location that shows a lock icon on the New Credentials page is on a plan below Essentials.
If the page is missing for you, open a Customer Care ticket in Toast Web and ask for standard API access for your own restaurant group, for internal reporting, with all read scopes. Mine came through in a day.
Toast emails you when access is live. The email lists the GUID for every location you selected, and you need those to connect anything. Save it with the credentials.
What do you connect it to once you have access?
An MCP server, which is the standard way an AI assistant talks to an outside system.
For Toast, I built one and run it against both my locations. It is open source and free: github.com/prime-cost/toast-mcp. Fifty five read only tools covering sales, labor, orders, menus and cash. The full setup, every click, is in I connected Claude to my Toast POS.
If you are on Square, you do not need me. Square publishes an official MCP, which is the best case scenario, and you should use theirs. Square's MCP docs are here.
What if you are on Clover, SpotOn, or Lightspeed?
Nothing exists yet that I know of, and I would like to fix that.
I cannot build a connection for a POS I do not run, because I have no way to test it against a real restaurant and I am not going to ship something I have not verified against live data. What I can do is build it with someone who does run it. If you are on one of those systems and willing to be the operator on the other end, testing against your own store, reach out and we will make it.
That is the only real barrier here. The code is not the hard part. Having a restaurant to prove it against is.
Everything I've written about Toast is at chriscusack.net/t/toast.