Mechanical Turk

A human-operator console that AI agents connect to via MCP. The inversion of a chatbot: the AI drives the conversation, the human is an on-call resource.

AI agent  ──MCP──▶  server  ──WebSocket──▶  browser console
                      ▲                            │
                      └──────── answer ────────────┘

How it works

1. You run the server and open the browser console
2. An AI agent connects to the MCP endpoint and calls ask_human
3. The question appears in your browser — you type an answer and hit Send
4. The answer is returned to the AI, unblocking it

Multiple agents can connect simultaneously. Questions queue in the inbox; the activity log tracks everything.

Setup

npm install
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000 for the human console.

Configure an MCP client to connect to http://localhost:3000/mcp.

MCP tools

Tool	Description
ask_human	Sends a question to the operator and blocks until they reply
notify_human	Sends a one-way message to the operator (fire and forget)

MCP client configuration

Claude Desktop / Claude Code

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mechanical-turk": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "http://localhost:3000/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Generic (HTTP + SSE)

POST http://localhost:3000/mcp   — initialize session / send messages
GET  http://localhost:3000/mcp   — SSE stream (mcp-session-id header required)
DELETE http://localhost:3000/mcp — close session

Scripts

Command	Description
npm run dev	Start with live reload (tsx watch)
npm run build	Compile TypeScript to dist/
npm start	Run compiled output

Environment

Variable	Default	Description
PORT	3000	Port to listen on