Model Context Protocol

One MCP job: hand the useful result back

DraftRelay does not try to become an agent framework. Its MCP surface gives an agent a narrow place to save a polished deliverable and gives the human a stable receipt for review.

01Contract

The unit of work is an artifact, not a conversation.

An artifact is the thing a person intends to read, paste, send, or act on: a client reply, Slack update, PR description, incident brief, decision, command set, or concise summary. It should stand on its own without terminal chatter. The MCP instructions explicitly exclude chain-of-thought, hidden reasoning, raw research dumps, tool traces, credentials, duplicate drafts, and whole transcripts.

This distinction keeps the tool smaller than a notes database and more deliberate than clipboard history. The agent composes the result; DraftRelay records its delivery state, source claims, safety findings, and destination representations.

02Tools

A small, inspectable surface.

MCP tools and their effects
ToolUse it forMutation
save_outputCreate one final free-form or typed artifact.Creates an item and revision.
list_outputsFind recent items without returning every body.Read-only.
read_outputFetch current content, revision, and status.Read-only.
revise_outputCreate a guarded immutable revision.Adds a revision.
mark_output_usedEnforce policy, record destination use, and optionally finish.Adds a receipt and may change status.

Write and use operations require the corresponding OAuth scopes. Idempotency keys and client event IDs are available where a retry could otherwise create duplicate work.

03Transport

Remote HTTP is authenticated; local HTTP is not interchangeable.

The hosted endpoint is https://draftrelay.onrender.com/mcp. It uses Streamable HTTP, OAuth discovery, dynamic client registration, scoped access, and revocable connections. Register it with a supported client rather than manufacturing or pasting an application token.

Hosted MCP registration

claude mcp add --transport http --scope user draftrelay https://draftrelay.onrender.com/mcp
codex mcp add draftrelay --url https://draftrelay.onrender.com/mcp

The open-source local edition recommends stdio. Its optional HTTP endpoint is restricted to 127.0.0.1 and has no authentication. Never replace the hosted URL with a publicly exposed local endpoint.

04Prompt

Name the audience, shape, and evidence.

After the implementation and tests are complete, save one GitHub PR description to DraftRelay. Include a concise summary, changed behavior, test plan, risk, branch, commit, and referenced files. Do not include tool logs or hidden reasoning.

Good prompts say when to save—after the work is finished—and what the result is for. They do not ask the server to infer verification that never happened. If tests were not run, the agent should record that status plainly.

05Boundaries

The server does not monitor or publish for you.

DraftRelay cannot see terminal scrollback unless the agent deliberately places text in a tool call. It does not capture keystrokes, run saved commands, verify provenance independently, or post directly to third-party destinations. A human opens the review surface and performs the final copy action.