Surfing Dog Inbox — Claude Code MCP server: take in requests
An open-source inbox for bookings, orders, quote requests and messages from people and their AI agents. Your rules handle the routine ones; you see the rest.
claude mcp add --transport http inbox https://inbox.surfingdog.ai/mcpWhat Surfing Dog Inbox does
Surfing Dog Inbox puts incoming business requests in one place: bookings, orders, price questions, messages. Your rules close some of them on their own. The rest reach you. The code is open and you host it.
There are four ways to run it. On an Ubuntu or Debian box, point a subdomain such as inbox.yourbusiness.com at the machine and run curl -fsSL https://surfingdog.ai/install.sh | sudo sh. With Docker, pull ghcr.io/surfingdogai/inbox for amd64 or arm64; the volume holds the data. A Cloudflare Workers path uses D1, a queue and a cron. Building from source needs Node 22.16+, 24 or 26: one process, one SQLite file.
Run the container by hand and it answers on the server itself only, behind a TLS proxy that drops a CF-Connecting-IP sent by the caller. The secret key comes from openssl rand -base64 32 and lives in inbox.env; keep a copy somewhere safe. MIT covers the whole repository — server, app, site, spec, SDK and examples.
What it helps with
- gather requests from a site and chat apps into one queue
- answer routine price questions without a person
- accept bookings sent by a customer's AI agent
- attach your own domain to the inbox with HTTPS
- run the inbox on your own server or in Docker
Example prompts for the agent
- Connect the Surfing Dog inbox and list today's new requests
- Book a bike service for Saturday morning through the inbox
- Add a rule: reply to price questions with a template and mark them routine
How to install Surfing Dog Inbox
Platform CLI: remote server
claude mcp add --transport http inbox https://inbox.surfingdog.ai/mcpPlatform CLI: remote server
codex mcp add surfing-dog-inbox --url https://inbox.surfingdog.ai/mcpConfig file
{
"mcpServers": {
"surfing-dog-inbox": {
"url": "https://inbox.surfingdog.ai/mcp"
}
}
}Config file
{
"servers": {
"surfing-dog-inbox": {
"type": "http",
"url": "https://inbox.surfingdog.ai/mcp"
}
}
}Platform CLI: remote server
gemini mcp add -t http surfing-dog-inbox https://inbox.surfingdog.ai/mcpStep by step, with commands for each platform: How to add an MCP server to Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, VS Code, Gemini CLI and more
Questions about Surfing Dog Inbox
How do I install Surfing Dog Inbox in Claude Code?
Run claude mcp add --transport http inbox https://inbox.surfingdog.ai/mcp. The other name works too: claude mcp add --transport http surfing-dog-inbox https://inbox.surfingdog.ai/mcp.
What does Surfing Dog Inbox do?
It takes in bookings, orders, quote requests and messages from people and their AI agents. Your rules close the routine ones, and you see the rest.
What do I need to self-host the inbox?
Building from source needs Node 22.16+, 24 or 26. In Docker the data sits in a volume, and the secret key is kept in inbox.env.
