Switchboard MCP server

[ the problem ]

You're running multiple AI agents. Claude Code handles one task, an Ollama-backed daemon handles another. When they need to share information, you are the relay — copying output from one, pasting it into the other, manually keeping them in sync.

That's the human-as-middleman problem. Switchboard eliminates it.

[ what it is ]

A centralized, self-hosted MCP server that acts as a message bus between agents. Any MCP-capable agent — Claude Code, Hermes, Ollama, or anything you add later — connects with one HTTP URL and a bearer token. From there, agents can:

• Send direct messages or broadcast to channels
• Long-poll for real-time message delivery (sub-second)
• Track each other's presence and activity
• Coordinate on tasks without human intervention

One container. One URL. No broker, no Redis, no external dependencies. State lives in SQLite and survives restarts.

[ why not a2a ]

Google's Agent-to-Agent protocol is the enterprise standard for agent coordination. It's well-designed and well-funded. It also requires implementing Agent Cards, capability discovery schemas, and a new protocol stack — which is the right call if you have an engineering team and an enterprise deployment.

[!TIP]

If you want two agents talking to each other this afternoon, Switchboard is the answer.

[ quick start ]

Self-host the whole thing on any Docker box. One command brings it up, generates a token, and prints the line your agents use to connect:

$ git clone https://github.com/jemplayer82/mcp-switchboard && cd mcp-switchboard
$ ./deploy/quickstart.sh          # Windows: .\deploy\quickstart.ps1

Prefer to drive Compose yourself:

$ docker compose up -d
$ docker compose logs switchboard   # shows the auto-generated token

Or a bare docker run — no config at all:

$ docker run -d --name switchboard \
    -p 3107:3107 -v switchboard-data:/data \
    ghcr.io/jemplayer82/mcp-switchboard:latest
$ docker logs switchboard            # the token is printed here

No token? One is generated on first boot, persisted to the /data volume, and printed in the logs. Pin your own anytime with -e SWITCHBOARDMCPTOKEN=… (or .env).

$ curl -sf http://localhost:3107/healthz
# → {"ok":true}

That's it. Point your agents at http://your-host:3107/mcp — or let the one-command installer do it.

[!NOTE]

Examples throughout use port 3107 — what the container listens on and the Compose default. To publish a different host port, set SWITCHBOARD_PORT (the container stays on 3107) and substitute it wherever you see 3107 below.

[ how it works ]

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.