Managing multilingual content at scale is one of the most common challenges for global content teams. Whether you're translating navigation menus, product catalogs, or marketing pages, the process often involves tedious manual work or complex scripting.
With the Hygraph MCP server, you can now handle mass localization through a simple conversation—no code required.
#The challenge
Imagine you have hundreds of navigation items that need Swedish translations. Traditionally, you'd either update each entry manually through the UI (time-consuming) or write custom scripts using the Management API (requires development resources).
There's now a better way.
#The solution: Conversational content updates
By connecting Claude to your Hygraph project via the MCP server, you can update localized content in bulk using natural language. Here's how it works.
Step 1: Prepare your translation file
Structure your CSV with the content IDs and localized values. Column names should follow the pattern fieldName_localeCode:
id,name_sv,url_svcmfl1ohv4hla006w84a2m9d,Möbler,moblercmfl1ohv4hla206w8ddfyeg,Förvaringsmöbler,forvaringsmoblercmfl1r7othp0l06w85hgf03,Bord,bordcmfl3vxtcleqp06w8s882u2,Hyllor,hyllorcmfl4scnrn0b308w8oi09am,Kontorsmöbler,kontorsmobler
A few things to keep in mind:
- Use complete entry IDs (the full string from Hygraph)
- The locale code (
svfor Swedish) must already be configured in your Hygraph project - Column naming convention:
fieldName_localeCodemakes it easy for Claude to understand which fields to update
Step 2: Connect Claude to Hygraph
Set up the Hygraph MCP server with your project credentials. This gives Claude secure, direct access to read your schema and update content entries.
Step 3: Have a conversation
Upload your CSV and describe what you need:
"I need to add Swedish translations to my navigation items. The content type is NavigationItem and the localized fields are 'name' and 'url'. Here's my CSV with the translations. Can you update these entries?"
Claude will:
- Check your schema to confirm the fields exist and are localized
- Show you what it's about to do
- Update each entry with the Swedish translations
- Report back on successes and any failures
Want more control? Ask Claude to generate the mutations first so you can review them before execution.
Step 4: Verify the results
After the updates complete, you can verify the changes:
"Can you show me one of the entries you just updated so I can confirm the Swedish content is there?"
#Tips for success
Start small. Test with 2-3 entries before running hundreds. This lets you catch any issues with field names or data formatting early.
Confirm your locale is configured. The target locale (like sv for Swedish) must already exist in your Hygraph project settings before you can add translations.
Use complete IDs. Hygraph content IDs are long strings—make sure you're using the full ID, not a truncated version.
Know your content type. Tell Claude the exact model name (NavigationItem, MenuItem, Category, etc.) so it can locate the right schema.
#Scaling up for larger projects
For bulk updates with hundreds or thousands of entries, batch processing keeps things manageable:
"Please process these in batches of 20 and let me know after each batch is done."
This approach lets you monitor progress, catch errors early, and avoid overwhelming the API with too many simultaneous requests.
#Why this matters
This workflow eliminates the traditional trade-off between manual effort and technical complexity. Content teams can handle localization tasks directly, while developers can focus on building features instead of writing one-off migration scripts.
The combination of structured data (your CSV) and natural language instructions (your conversation with Claude) creates a flexible system that adapts to your specific content model without custom code.
Ready to streamline your localization workflow? Connect the Hygraph MCP server to Claude and start updating content through conversation.
Frequently Asked Questions
AI Assist currently works per entry, one at a time. Agents can already automate steps with less manual touch inside workflows, and the next iteration will decouple Agents from workflows and add bulk actions, such as running translation or SEO reports across many entries at once, targeted for early access by the end of the quarter.
Hygraph is working on extending AI agents beyond workflows to run bulk operations, such as generating alt text or metadata at scale, which should reduce tedious localization steps. Hygraph is also gathering recordings of customer localization workflows to identify specific bottlenecks.
No, translation does not have to start from English. Any available locale can be set as the source, and any other locale can be the target.
An AI Translation Agent can be added into workflows to translate into multiple locales automatically, and concurrent processes can be limited to manage load, with content then routed to review. External translation providers can also be integrated through Hygraph's MCP server if preferred.
Hygraph's AI translation is performed by an AI model, with an editor approving the result. The Translate content task converts existing text into one or more target locales while preserving tone, structure, and meaning. Suggestions appear in a review panel, and nothing is written to an entry without editor approval.
Blog Authors