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Quick start

Goal: get an AI agent making real MCP calls into your Magento catalog. Three steps, roughly thirty minutes if you're already comfortable with Composer and Magento admin.

1. Create a Horizon account​

Sign up at horizon.byte8.io. If you already have a Byte8 account (Pulsar or Orbit user), the same login works — Horizon access is granted on first sign-in or via byte8.io/products/horizon checkout.

The Trial plan gives you 14 days, 10,000 API calls, and one store. No card required.

2. Install the Magento extension​

On the server running Magento:

composer require byte8/module-horizon
bin/magento setup:upgrade
bin/magento setup:di:compile
bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy
bin/magento cache:flush

Then in Magento admin, go to Stores → Configuration → Byte8 → Horizon and:

  • Paste the API key you get from the next step (we'll come back to this).
  • Click Save Config.
  • Run the indexer once to build the flat AI-index table:
bin/magento indexer:reindex byte8_horizon_product

Full walkthrough: Install the extension.

3. Add the store in the Horizon dashboard​

At horizon.byte8.io/dashboard/stores, click Add store:

  • Name — anything memorable (e.g. "Acme UK Production").
  • Base URL — your storefront URL, no trailing slash (e.g. https://shop.acme.example).

On save, the dashboard shows you the API key exactly once. Copy it now — there's no way to retrieve it later, only rotate to a new one.

Paste this key back into Magento admin (step 2), save config, and click Test connection in the dashboard. You should see a green check plus the Magento version.

4. Make your first MCP call​

The hosted gateway lives at https://horizon.byte8.io/mcp (Streamable HTTP transport). Point any MCP client at it with your API key:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "horizon": {
      "transport": "http",
      "url": "https://horizon.byte8.io/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "X-Horizon-Key": "YOUR_API_KEY_HERE"
      }
    }
  }
}

For Claude Desktop specifically, follow Connecting Claude — same idea, packaged for the Desktop config.

Test it with the ping tool, then try:

search_products(query: "running shoes", limit: 5)

The agent should respond with five product summaries from your catalog. If it doesn't, the connection-test step above told you what's wrong — see Troubleshooting if not.

What's next​