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AlpacaRelay runs an MCP server, so an AI assistant can work in your workspace for you: generate and edit emails, look up brands and templates, manage contacts and segments, read analytics, and build a campaign up to the point of sending. Ask in your editor or chat; the assistant calls the tools.

Connect your client

Sign in or use a key, in Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code, Codex, and more.

Tools

Every tool, what it costs, and how to ask for a good result.

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How it relates to the REST API

Every tool runs the same code the app runs when you click the matching button, as you, in your workspace. Permissions, validation, and billing are the app’s own, so the assistant can do what you could do in the app and no more. generate_email uses the same generation engine as the REST API, with the same credits and limits. Everything else, such as editing, scoring, contacts, campaigns, and analytics, exists only over MCP. The REST API only generates. Use MCP when you’re working in an editor or chat and want the assistant to do the work alongside you, like drafting and refining a release announcement while you’re in the repo that ships it. Use the REST API when generation is part of a system: a backend job, a scheduled digest, anything that runs without a person watching.

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What it won’t do

Some things stay in the app on purpose:
  • Send a campaign. An assistant can build a campaign up to the point of sending: pick the email, set the sender, subject, and recipients, choose “send now”, or propose a time. Sending, and confirming a schedule, are things you do in the app.
  • Send email to anyone but you. send_test_email sends one test of an email to your own verified address, and nowhere else.
  • Connect or disconnect an ESP. Connecting is a browser sign-in with the provider. Once an ESP is connected, the assistant can use it.
  • Touch billing, API keys, members, or workspace settings.

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Security

An API key or an approved sign-in reaches your whole workspace through these tools. It can read contacts, campaigns, and analytics, add contacts, edit and delete emails, and publish templates to your connected ESP. It can’t send a campaign. Treat a key, and the client config files that hold one, like a password.
The same API key works for both the REST API and MCP. A key you created only for REST generation can still use every MCP tool. See Authentication for how to keep keys safe and what to do if one leaks. Each connection reaches one workspace. An API key belongs to the workspace it was created in. A sign-in names one workspace in the URL, or uses your only workspace if you belong to just one. An email or campaign ID from another workspace is “not found”, even if you’re a member there too.

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What it shares with the REST API

Authentication

The same API keys work for both. MCP also takes an OAuth sign-in.

Credits and limits

One credit pool, one per-minute call budget per key, three generations at a time.

Errors

The same failures. MCP reports them as messages the assistant can read.