Tools and MCP servers

Tools reach a teammate through the Model Context Protocol. Servers are added once, to the room, and granted per teammate.

Add a server

Settings → Tools → MCP servers. A server is either:

• Command: a program Hotline starts on this machine and speaks to over stdio. Give it the command, arguments and any Environment variables it needs.
• Reached at a URL: a server that speaks streamable HTTP. Auth is either OAuth sign-in, which Hotline completes in your browser and keeps the tokens for, or a Token sent as a bearer header. Tokens are kept on this machine, bound to that server’s URL.

Removing a server takes its tools away from every teammate on their next start.

Grant servers to a teammate

In the teammate’s pane, Which MCP servers this teammate gets:

• Default for new teammates
• Only the servers ticked below
• Every gateway server, including ones added later

A grant takes effect on the teammate’s next start. Teammates that run an outside harness (Claude Code, Cursor and the rest) receive the same grants through Hotline, alongside whatever tools that harness configures itself.

Hotline’s own tools

Every teammate, whichever driver, also has tools that belong to the room:

Tool	What it does
request_human	Asks you for something only a person can do, and waits up to ten minutes.
send_file	Sends you a file in the conversation: a report, a chart, a screenshot of its computer. A picture shows in the conversation and opens full size when clicked; a PDF opens when you press Open; any file can be saved where you choose.
message_teammate	Sends a message to another teammate, once you have allowed that pair.
schedule, loop, list_schedules, cancel_schedule	Wakes itself later, or on an interval, with Background work on.

A teammate with a computer gets that machine’s tools as one more server, whatever its MCP grant says.