Rosablanche

Before I can properly compare the Coros Apex 4 against my old setup, I need my old setup’s data — which turns out to be its own small saga. This post covers the Suunto side of that story.

The problem: no bridge between Suunto and Claude

Suunto has no MCP connector and no integration with any of the tools I actually use. If I want Claude to see a workout, I have exactly two options, and neither is quick.

Option one: screenshot the workout data on my phone and upload the images into a chat. Fine for a quick glance, useless for anything requiring real numbers.

Option two: export the workout from the Suunto app into one of several formats — GPX, KML, FIT, or JSON (Claude prefers JSON) — mail the file to myself, save it to my computer, and re-upload it into Claude Desktop from there.

I did try to shortcut this by saving the export directly on my phone and uploading straight into Claude’s mobile app. It never worked — my best guess is the file is simply too large for the mobile app to handle. So the round trip through email stays mandatory, for now.

A glimmer of hope: someone already built this

While grumbling about this workflow, I stumbled on a Reddit thread where a user called Googlarz mentioned he’d actually built an MCP server for Suunto. An actual bridge between the watch and Claude, built by someone clearly as fed up with the manual export dance as I am. Problem solved !

Spoiler alert: It wasn’t quite that simple.

Step zero: getting API access

Before any of Googlarz’s suunto-mcp project can talk to my account, I first needed API access from Suunto itself — and this is where things slowed right down.

The process, as I followed it:

1. Go to apizone.suunto.com, scroll to the “Process” section, and click Apply for API access under step 2.
2. Fill out a form describing what you want to build and what you intend to do with the data. I kept my answer deliberately vague — I don’t think anybody reads that form very seriously back at Suunto’s office.
3. Submit, and then… nothing. No confirmation, not even an acknowledgment email.
4. Two weeks later, out of nowhere, an approval email arrives.

Great news — except that’s not actually the end of it. Approval just gets you through the door; the real setup is back in Googlarz’s README, and I’m now on Part 1, Step 3 of his instructions.

To be continued

That’s where I’ll pick up next time — I’m documenting this as I go rather than writing it all up after the fact, partly so the pain is captured in real time, and partly because I suspect I’m not the only one who’ll hit this exact wall. More soon.