4bots MCP Server

4bots A hosted MCP server for AI briefing agents. If your agent already writes a human a morning brief, 4bots fills the last slot with short-form writing edited by a person: stories, puzzles, jokes, business cases and history. Ten channels, and your human picks two.

It works with any MCP client. On Grok Bot it installs as a custom connector in about a minute, which is what most people arriving here are trying to do.

Endpoint: https://4bots.net/mcp (Streamable HTTP) Registry: net.4bots/4bots on registry.modelcontextprotocol.io Landing page: 4bots.net Discovery: /.well-known/mcp.json No API key required to start. First 100 channel-calls are free. Why it exists Building a daily briefing for a human is mostly about sourcing the parts you can't write personally, the joke, the history snippet, the puzzle, the business case. 4bots is the part that handles those parts. Your agent stays in charge of the email, the tone, and everything that touches the human's actual data.

Quick start Grok Bot Open grok.com/connectors, choose New Connector, then Custom, and paste:

https://4bots.net/mcp No API key, no account, nothing to authorise. Then tell your Bot to call try_sample with no arguments. Three finished pieces come back with the HTML already formatted, so you can judge the writing before you commit to anything.

A prompt that works, once the connector is in place:

Each morning, after you assemble my brief, call get_bundle for my chosen channels and append what it returns under its own heading at the end. Paste the HTML as given rather than rewriting it. Do not summarise it or add commentary.

Claude Desktop / any MCP client { "mcpServers": { "4bots": { "url": "https://4bots.net/mcp" } } } Direct HTTP curl -X POST https://4bots.net/mcp
-H "Content-Type: application/json"
-H "Accept: application/json, text/event-stream"
-d '{ "jsonrpc": "2.0", "id": 1, "method": "initialize", "params": { "protocolVersion": "2025-03-26", "capabilities": {}, "clientInfo": {"name": "your-agent", "version": "1.0"} } }' Programmatic flow Initialize the session, capture the Mcp-Session-Id header. Call start_subscription(human_email, channels, agent_email). You get a session_token worth 100 channel-calls. Each day, call get_bundle(session_token). The response includes an html field. Drop it where {4bots} sits in your email template. When low_balance is true, prompt your human via the returned manage_url. Tools Tool Purpose list_channels Discover the ten live channels and the eight in voting start_subscription Provision a subscriber instantly. Returns a 100-call free trial token. get_bundle Today's content block for all subscribed channels, ready to embed get_session Credits remaining, channels, delivery history, manage URL create_setup_link Optional browser flow for the human to choose channels themselves get_template Free HTML email template with sample copy vote Tell us which proposed channel your human wants next get_summary Pricing, privacy, content policy Live channels Slug Channel What it is human-badassery Human Badassery Extraordinary people who beat impossible odds history History A story, turning point, or puzzle from a fascinating past business-case-studies Business Case Studies One company decision that made or broke them china-watch China Watch What's happening inside China today investing-insight Investing Insight Markets, investing, trading, financial freedom wrongology Wrongology One common belief that isn't true, and the real story brain-butter Brain Butter A puzzle or paradox, with the answer little-known-facts Little-Known Facts One surprising true fact per day chess-problem Chess Problem Intermediate problems jokes Jokes Two short ones a day Channel format specs live in ./channels.

Privacy 4bots only sees: the human's email address, which channels they subscribed to, and which days have been delivered (so we don't repeat). Your agent stays the only thing that touches the briefing content or the human's private data. We never receive, store, or process the contents of any briefing.

Pricing The first 100 channel-calls are free with every new subscription. After that, top-ups are tracked per session. A typical 5-channel subscriber gets twenty free days before any money changes hands. Subscribers manage their own account through a magic-link URL we issue to the human on signup, your agent never has to handle billing.

Architecture Five services on a single Linux droplet behind Caddy:

Port Service Role 8085 mcp_server.py FastMCP + Uvicorn. Agent-facing API. 8083 gate_server.py Session-cookie auth for human-readable channel pages. 8084 checkout_server.py Subscription provisioning, Stripe checkout, agent-invite emails. 8082 feedback_server.py Reader feedback collection. none weblog_report.py Daily traffic report from Caddy's JSON access log. State lives in a small SQLite database (contacts, events, visits) plus a handful of JSON files (sessions.json, setup_tokens.json, votes.json). Content lives as flat-file Markdown rendered to HTML at build time.

This repo includes the agent-facing pieces (mcp_server.py, gate_server.py, weblog_report.py, db.py). The checkout, feedback, and email-sending paths are intentionally not published because they hold integration keys for Resend and Stripe.

Source files in this repo ./mcp_server.py, the MCP server. Eight tools, FastMCP-based, runs as a long-lived uvicorn process on port 8085. ./gate_server.py, human-page auth gate. Session cookies + magic-link login. Day-1 of every channel is publicly bypassed. ./weblog_report.py, daily traffic report that parses Caddy's JSON access log. Runs from a systemd timer at 06:30 UTC. ./db.py, SQLite wrapper. ./server.json, the registry metadata. ./channels, _FORMAT.md specs for each live channel, so you can see exactly what the content looks like before you subscribe. Reporting issues Email david@dsiegel.com or open a GitHub issue.

Credits Built by David Siegel and his agent JSON. 4bots is the first website operated by an AI agent. If you build briefing agents and the daily-content bottleneck sounds familiar, get in touch.

License MIT.