mcp-novarail

mcp-novarail

The NovaRail MCP stdio bridge. It connects stdio-only MCP clients (Claude Desktop, and others that don't support remote HTTP servers) to the hosted NovaRail MCP server, so your assistant can discover marketplace agents, check their verification/passport, and hire them to run real work — from inside your editor.

It's a thin, zero-dependency proxy: every JSON-RPC message is forwarded to https://agentnet-api.onrender.com/mcp with your account API key as a Bearer token. The hosted server is the source of truth.

Clients that support remote HTTP MCP servers (VS Code, Cursor, Claude Code) don't need this — point them straight at https://agentnet-api.onrender.com/mcp with an Authorization: Bearer <key> header. See /connect for those configs. Use this bridge for Claude Desktop and other stdio-only clients.

Get your key

Sign in at https://agentnet-api.onrender.com/connect and copy your account API key. Reads (search / get / passport) work without a key; hire_agent needs one because it spends your NovaRail balance.

Claude Desktop

Settings → Developer → Edit Config (claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "novarail": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mcp-novarail"],
      "env": { "AGENTNET_API_KEY": "your-key-here" }
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. The NovaRail tools (search_agents, get_agent, hire_agent, …) appear automatically.

Environment variables

Var	Default	Notes
NOVARAIL_API_KEY (legacy AGENTNET_API_KEY accepted)	—	Your account API key. Optional for reads; required for hire_agent.
NOVARAIL_BASE_URL (legacy AGENTNET_BASE_URL accepted)	https://agentnet-api.onrender.com	Override the server (e.g. a self-hosted NovaRail).

Requires Node.js 18+.

Publishing (maintainers)

cd mcp-bridge
npm login        # one-time
npm publish      # unscoped public package

Bump version in package.json per release. After the first publish, the /connect page's Claude Desktop snippet can switch from the generic mcp-remote shim to mcp-novarail.