What it is
HydroGardenAdvisor is a growing advisor for vegetables and herbs grown hydroponically — lettuce, leafy greens, herbs, and fruiting crops like tomatoes and peppers. Connected to ChatGPT, it works with your real garden — your active grows, your grow history, your harvest results — instead of answering from general knowledge.
Everything the connector does runs through the same HydroGardenAdvisor service as the mobile app. Grows you start in a conversation appear in the app's Garden; check-ins and harvests you log in the app inform what ChatGPT sees. One account, one garden, wherever you work. HydroGardenAdvisor is live on the App Store and Google Play — the connector works the same either way, and you don't need the app at all to use it.
ChatGPT opens HydroGardenAdvisor's cards and forms — a setup plan, a plant diagnosis, a harvest result, your garden at a glance — right in the conversation when a tool calls for one.
What you can do
Plan a grow setup. Tell it the crop and your system type — DWC, Kratky, NFT, Dutch bucket — and get a real setup plan: the photoperiod that actually fits the crop (most kits default to 16 hours, which bolts lettuce that wants 12–14), a nutrient mix scaled to your reservoir size, bolt-resistant cultivar picks where they matter, and what to expect week to week. Setup plans are unlimited.
Check your plants. Send a photo mid-grow and get a diagnosis, not a shrug — tip burn, light burn, etiolation, early bolt, root rot, or a real nutrient deficiency, named and prioritized, not a wall of possibilities. Photos can't travel inside a ChatGPT conversation, so HydroGardenAdvisor hands you a private, single-use upload link first — see How photos work below.
Log a harvest. Report how it turned out and get a real assessment: what worked, what to change, and concrete adjustments carried forward into your next cycle for the same crop — so the next setup plan already knows what you learned.
Work your garden. Ask what's actively growing, pull up a past grow's history, compare two harvests of the same crop side by side, or add a note to a grow's journal.
Example prompts
Say what you want in plain language — HydroGardenAdvisor engages when the request is about your own garden, your grows, or your harvest:
- “Plan a grow setup for lettuce in a Kratky system.”
- “Check my plants — here's a photo.”
- “What's in my garden right now?”
- “I just harvested — log it.”
How to connect
You'll need a ChatGPT account and about a minute:
1. In ChatGPT, open Plugins in the left sidebar, then the + menu at the top right and choose Add custom MCP server. Name it HydroGardenAdvisor and leave Authentication on OAuth.
2. Paste in the URL https://api.hydrogardenadvisor.app/mcp.
3. ChatGPT opens HydroGardenAdvisor's sign-in page. Enter your email — we send an 8-character sign-in code to your inbox. No password to create.
4. Enter the code and approve the connection. If you've used the HydroGardenAdvisor app with the same email, your garden is already there. If you're new, your account is created on the spot.
The plugin is personal to your account — it lives under Plugins → Personal → Created by you — and doesn't appear in ChatGPT's public plugin directory.
Then just ask — see example prompts above.
To disconnect at any time, remove HydroGardenAdvisor from ChatGPT's Plugins page. Access tokens expire on their own.
How photos work
Photos never travel through the conversation. HydroGardenAdvisor hands you a private, single-use link that opens a simple upload page — take a photo or choose one from your library, submit it, then tell it you're done and it fetches the diagnosis. Photos are held for at most 15 minutes and deleted as soon as they're analyzed, or when the link expires unused.
Attaching a photo directly in ChatGPT's own composer won't reach HydroGardenAdvisor at all — a tool call can't see it, and ChatGPT's own read of an attached photo isn't a real diagnosis. Always use the upload link above for a photo that actually gets analyzed and saved.
Usage limits
The connector uses the same account and the same limits as the app: setup plans are unlimited, every crop. Photo diagnoses and harvest assessments are each limited to 3 a month, up to 20 in total. Your account's features work the same here as anywhere else you use HydroGardenAdvisor.
Privacy
The short version: we receive only what the tools need — the details of each request and the photos you submit through our own upload link. We never see your ChatGPT conversation, and ChatGPT only sees what a tool returns. The full details live in the connector section of our privacy policy.
Questions or trouble
Write to support@hydrogardenadvisor.app. If a sign-in code doesn't arrive, check your spam folder first — codes expire after 15 minutes, and you can always request a fresh one by starting the connection again.