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Cisco Meraki is a cloud-managed IT platform spanning MX security appliances, MR wireless access points, MS switches, MV cameras, MT sensors, MG cellular gateways, and Systems Manager (SM) mobile device management. Every device in every one of your organizations is administered from the same Meraki Dashboard.

Connecting Meraki to StackJack gives your AI assistant a family of 944 meraki_ MCP tools — MCP (Model Context Protocol) tools are the standardized commands an AI assistant can call through StackJack. With them, your AI can:

• Inventory organizations, networks, and devices across your whole Dashboard
• Monitor appliance uplinks, wireless health, switch ports, camera analytics, and sensor readings
• Configure SSIDs, firewall rules, VLANs, VPN, traffic shaping, and switch settings
• Manage the device fleet — claim, reboot, run live tools (ping, cable test, throughput), and schedule firmware upgrades
• Operate Systems Manager MDM — check in, lock, reboot, or wipe managed devices
• Bulk-apply many configuration changes atomically with Meraki action batches

How StackJack authenticates to Cisco Meraki

Meraki authenticates with a single static API key — there is no OAuth flow and nothing to refresh. StackJack sends the key with every request in Meraki's custom X-Cisco-Meraki-API-Key header. You paste that one key into StackJack's credential field; there is no separate client ID.

The key inherits the role and organization access of the Dashboard admin who generated it. An organization admin's key spans every organization that admin can see, so scope the admin account to only the organizations and privilege level you want an AI to reach. A 403 from a tool means that admin lacks access to that organization or resource — not that the key is invalid.

Meraki also issues in-flight org-shard redirects mid-request; StackJack follows them automatically and re-sends the API key, so no action is needed on your side.

Before you begin

• In StackJack: you need a role that can manage connectors (tenant Owner, a co-owner, or an Administrator).
• In Meraki: you need Dashboard admin access, the ability to enable API access org-wide, and the ability to generate a personal API key under your profile.
• Know your region. Most tenants are on the default https://api.meraki.com. Choose Canada, China, India, or US-Gov (FedRAMP) only if your organization is hosted on that regional shard.

The same steps below are also shown inside the portal — open Connectors, find the Cisco Meraki card, and click How To Connect.

Step 1 — Generate an API key in the Meraki Dashboard

1. Sign in to the Meraki Dashboard at dashboard.meraki.com as an administrator.
2. Enable API access for the organization: go to Organization → Settings → Dashboard API access and turn it on.
3. Open your account menu (top-right) → My profile, scroll to API access, and click Generate new API key.
4. Copy the key immediately — Meraki shows it exactly once. If you lose it, you can only generate a new one (which does not automatically revoke the old key; revoke old keys from the same API access panel).

Cisco is rolling out newer scoped "API keys & access" alongside the classic personal key — either works with StackJack. The personal key described above is the classic path.

Step 2 — Add the credentials in StackJack

1. In the StackJack portal, open Connectors.
2. Find the Cisco Meraki card. Click How To Connect for the same steps inline, or Configure to enter the credentials.
3. Fill in the form:

4. Click Save.

What happens when you save

• The key is stored encrypted in Azure Key Vault — never in the StackJack database, and it is never shown back to you.
• If this is the first time you configure Meraki, a Free-tier subscription for the connector is created automatically so its Free tools work right away.
• StackJack immediately live-validates the key by calling Meraki's GET /organizations endpoint. Validation never blocks the save: you'll either see a success confirmation or a "saved but validation failed" warning with the reason.
• The connector card shows the current connection and validity status from then on.

Discovering your scope

Almost every operational tool needs an ID you look up first. Your AI can chain these discovery reads automatically:

• meraki_get_organizations → the organizationId values your key can see
• meraki_get_organization_networks → the networkId values within an organization
• meraki_get_organization_devices → the device serial values within an organization

Plans and available tools

• Free includes the 503 read tools — the full GET surface across organizations, networks, devices, appliance, wireless, switch, camera, sensor, cellular gateway, Systems Manager, licensing, insight, and the read-only Catalyst wireless controller family.
• Pro adds the 441 write/action tools: create, update, and delete configuration; claim devices; reboot; run device live tools; schedule firmware upgrades; drive Systems Manager fleet commands; and execute action batches.
• Business offers the same tool set as Pro with a higher monthly call quota.

Meraki's API key is a single org-admin credential with no per-user sign-in flow, so there is no per-user attribution — all AI traffic uses the shared key. Current pricing and quotas are shown in the portal's Billing page and at checkout.

Safety note: 131 of the Pro tools are flagged destructive because they change device or fleet state, often irreversibly — device reboots (meraki_reboot_device), claiming or removing devices (meraki_claim_network_devices), firmware upgrades, Systems Manager wipe and lock commands, and action-batch execution (meraki_create_organization_action_batch, which can run arbitrary bulk writes). Scope your AI's access deliberately: use the tool selections on the MCP Setup page and the Permissions page to enable only the actions you want an AI to take.

Rate limits

Meraki allows roughly 10 requests per second per organization (bursting to about 30 requests over 2 seconds) and about 100 requests per second per source IP; exceeding either returns a 429 with a Retry-After header. StackJack paces its Meraki calls per tenant (about 600 per minute) and honors any Retry-After it receives, so bursts of tool calls queue briefly instead of failing — a long multi-page read may simply take a little longer.

Rotating or replacing the key

To swap the key, generate a new one in the Meraki Dashboard (My profile → API access → Generate new API key), then update Connectors → Cisco Meraki → Configure in StackJack with the new value. Generating a new key does not revoke the old one, so revoke the old key from the same panel once StackJack is using the new one.

Troubleshooting