agent-mcp-hub

One MCP server that bridges multiple CLI coding agents — Codex, Cursor, OpenCode, and Claude — into any MCP client.

stdio only — by design. The hub ships no Docker image and no HTTP transport (both were removed during the 0.5.x line). A containerised or remote server cannot see the caller's repository path and cannot reuse the caller's CLI logins — it would break the product contract on both halves. The hub runs as a child process of your MCP client, on your machine, as you.

Tools

| Tool | Description | |---|---| | codex | Delegate a prompt to codex exec (prompt piped via stdin) | | cursor | Delegate a prompt to cursor-agent -p (prompt piped via stdin) | | opencode | Delegate a prompt to opencode run | | claude | Delegate a prompt to the Claude Code CLI (prompt piped via stdin) | | run_all | Same prompt to all agents in parallel, results side by side | | list_agents | Which agent CLIs are installed and on PATH | | ping | Health check |

Agent tools accept prompt (required), model, cwd, timeoutMs (total runtime cap, default 1800000 = 30 min), and idleTimeoutMs (inactivity cap, default 300000 = 5 min). See Long-running tasks & timeouts.

Known limitation: opencode prompts may not start with - (its CLI could parse them as flags); the tool returns an actionable error instead of guessing.

Error handling

When a wrapped CLI fails, the hub classifies the failure and returns a clean, ANSI-free, actionable isError result — never a raw terminal dump — naming the class and the exact fix:

| Class | Example remediation | |---|---| | not_installed | install the CLI (e.g. npm i -g @openai/codex) / fix PATH | | not_authenticated | codex login · cursor-agent login · opencode auth login · claude → /login (or set the matching API key) | | not_configured | set a model/provider in the CLI's config | | timed_out | raise timeoutMs, or check the agent/model is responsive | | stream_stalled | the agent reached the network but its stream keeps dropping (e.g. cursor behind a TLS-intercepting proxy) — treat that agent as unavailable; raising timeoutMs will not help | | server_busy | retry shortly (upstream rate-limit, or the local agent-spawn queue is full) | | tool_failure | generic non-zero exit — the message includes (exit N) and a trimmed output tail |

For example, an unauthenticated cursor no longer returns its ANSI "press any key to sign in" banner — it returns cursor is not authenticated … Fix: run cursor-agent login``.

Review a change (review_change)

Runs a runner agent in a git cwd to make a change, captures the actual git diff of what changed, then has a reviewer agent judge that diff. Returns the runner's output, the diff (--stat), and a PASS / WARN / FAIL verdict with findings.

Inputs: runner, reviewer (agent names), prompt, cwd (must be a git worktree), optional model, timeoutMs.

Key notes:

• Cross-agent by design — e.g. codex writes, claude reviews.
• Returns the concrete diff that the plain agent tools don't expose.
• Newly-created (untracked) files are surfaced to the reviewer with their contents (bounded: 64 KiB per file, 50 files; excess is truncated and flagged). git diff alone would omit them entirely.
• If the worktree was already dirty, the diff may include pre-existing changes (noted in the output).
• Complements — does not replace — client-side stop-hooks or PR-time CI review.
• The confirm gate (MCP_CONFIRM) applies.

{
  "tool": "review_change",
  "arguments": {
    "runner": "codex",
    "reviewer": "claude",
    "prompt": "Add retry with exponential backoff to the API client",
    "cwd": "/Users/you/projects/my-app"
  }
}

Prerequisites

Install and authenticate the CLIs you want to use (any subset works):

• Codex: npm i -g @openai/codex && codex login
• Cursor: curl https://cursor.com/install -fsS | bash && cursor-agent login
• OpenCode: npm i -g opencode-ai && opencode auth login
• Claude Code: npm i -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code && claude (first run logs in)

Install

Recommended — global install (fast, reliable startup): install the pinned version once, then point your client at the agent-mcp-hub binary. Startup is instant and the client connects reliably.

npm i -g [email protected]

Claude Code

claude mcp add agent-hub -- agent-mcp-hub

Cursor / generic mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "agent-hub": {
      "command": "agent-mcp-hub"
    }
  }
}

Zero-install alternative (npx)

No global install, but npx re-resolves the package on every launch, so first start is slower and can occasionally trip a client's connection-probe timeout (the server itself is fine — just retry). Prefer the global install for a persistent setup.

claude mcp add agent-hub -- npx -y [email protected]
# mcp.json:  "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "[email protected]"]

Pre-release / fallback: To test an unreleased commit, run directly from GitHub: npx -y github:blackaxgit/agent-mcp-hub#<tag-or-sha>. This builds from source on first fetch, so under npm v12+ you must allow the prepare script.

Configuration

MCP_AGENTS — comma-separated allowlist of the agents to expose (codex,cursor,opencode,claude). Unset or empty exposes all agents. Disabled agents get no tool and are absent from list_agents/run_all. An unknown name fails at startup with an error listing the valid names, so typos never silently disable an agent.

For stdio, set it in the client's mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "agent-hub": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "[email protected]"],
      "env": { "MCP_AGENTS": "codex,claude" }
    }
  }
}

Confirm before running an agent — MCP_CONFIRM

Set MCP_CONFIRM=1 (values 1/true/on/all; default off) to require a confirmation before any agent tool — and run_all — actually spawns a CLI. The server sends a brief summary (agent · prompt · cwd · model) and waits: accept runs the agent, decline runs nothing and returns a terminal cancellation.

This uses the standard MCP elicitation capability, so it is client/IDE-agnostic — it works with any MCP client that supports form elicitation (Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, Zed, Windsurf, custom SDK clients, …); the gate keys on the protocol capability, never a product name. Clients that don't support elicitation transparently run without a prompt (no hang, no error).

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "agent-hub": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "[email protected]"],
      "env": { "MCP_CONFIRM": "1" }
    }
  }
}

Long-running tasks & timeouts

A complex agent task can run for many minutes. The hub bounds each run with two independent timers so a productive long run survives while a genuinely stuck one fails fast:

• Idle (inactivity) timeout — idleTimeoutMs (per call) / MCP_AGENT_IDLE_TIMEOUT_MS (env), default 300000 (5 min). The timer resets on every chunk of output the CLI produces, so an agent that keeps working (streaming output) never trips it. An agent that goes silent — e.g. opencode stuck on an unreachable model backend — is killed after the idle window with an actionable "no output — the agent may be hung or its model/backend is unreachable" error, instead of burning the full cap.
• Total runtime cap — timeoutMs (per call) / MCP_AGENT_TIMEOUT_MS (env), default 1800000 (30 min). A hard upper bound regardless of activity.

Whichever fires first kills the agent's process group. Tradeoff: the idle reset assumes the CLI streams intermediate output. codex and opencode do; claude -p and cursor-agent -p may emit only the final result, so a long silent task on those can be idle-killed at 5 min — raise idleTimeoutMs / MCP_AGENT_IDLE_TIMEOUT_MS for such tasks, or rely on the total cap.

While an agent runs, the hub emits MCP progress notifications to clients that request them (_meta.progressToken) — live feedback during long runs. Note: on Claude Code (stdio) the per-server request timeout in .mcp.json (or the MCP_TOOL_TIMEOUT env var it honors) is a hard wall-clock that progress does not reset (default ~28h) — raise it if you lowered it below your longest run.

Upgrading

Global install: install the new version — the pinned agent-mcp-hub command in your MCP config picks it up on the next client start:

npm i -g [email protected]

npx (pinned): bump the pinned version in your MCP config — e.g. change [email protected] to [email protected] everywhere.

Always-latest (not recommended for shared configs): use agent-mcp-hub@latest instead of a pinned version. Note that npx caches by version — it may serve a stale copy. Force a fresh fetch with npx --prefer-online agent-mcp-hub or npx clear-npx-cache.

Pinning is reproducible and recommended for team-wide or checked-in mcp.json files.

Development

npm install
npm test           # vitest
npm run typecheck  # strict TS over src + tests
npm run dev        # run from source over stdio
npm run build      # emit dist/

Architecture

Pure adapters (src/adapters/* — prompt → {args, stdin?}, no I/O) → one subprocess boundary (src/exec.ts) → MCP stdio server (src/server.ts). Adding an agent = one ~15-line adapter file + one line in src/registry.ts.

License

Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL-2.0).

Versions before 0.5.2 were released under the MIT license; that grant stands for those versions. MPL-2.0 applies from 0.5.2 onward.