mcp-withallo is a local Model Context Protocol server that exposes the Allo API as read-only tools to any MCP-compatible AI client — Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code, Zed, Cline, Continue, and others.

Once installed, ask Claude in plain English to summarize calls, dig through SMS threads, search transcripts for keywords, or pull team analytics. The server never sends messages, mutates contacts, or writes to your CRM — it only reads.

Features

• 12 read-only tools covering calls, transcripts, AI summaries, messages, contacts, conversations, tags and analytics.
• Full call transcripts — speaker-attributed turns with timestamps, recording URL and AI summary, exposed via allo_search_calls and allo_get_conversation_item.
• Full-text conversation search — allo_search_conversation_items matches across transcripts, summaries and message bodies, with filters for direction, date range, tags, recording presence, unread / unresponded state.
• Period-over-period analytics — allo_analytics_overview returns call/SMS volumes and handling-time KPIs, optionally compared to a baseline period and scoped to specific users.
• Safe by design — read-only by construction; nothing the AI can call writes to your Allo account or sends a message to a customer.
• Single static binary — built in Go, no runtime dependency, runs as a stdio MCP child process.
• Aware of Allo rate limits — surfaces HTTP 429 quota errors as a single actionable sentence so the model knows to stop instead of retrying blindly.

Why this exists

Allo is an AI phone system for sales and support teams: every call is recorded, transcribed, AI-summarised and synced to a CRM. That data is exactly the kind of context an AI assistant should see — "summarize my last 5 calls with Acme", "find all calls where the customer asked about pricing", "how did the team perform this week?". This MCP server makes that data queryable from any LLM that speaks MCP, without giving the model any way to send a message or change account state.

It's positioned in the same space as MCP servers for Aircall, OpenPhone, Dialpad, Twilio, Gong and Fireflies, but specifically for the Allo stack.

Example prompts

Once configured, just ask Claude (or your MCP client of choice):

• "Summarize my last 5 calls with Acme Corp."
• "Find every call where the customer mentioned 'refund' or 'cancel' this month."
• "How many calls did the team take last week, broken down by user?"
• "Pull yesterday's call with +14155551234 and give me the transcript and action items."
• "Which contacts have unresponded messages older than 48 hours?"
• "What were the top objections raised in calls tagged 'demo' in April?"
• "List my unread voicemails and summarize each one."
• "Compare call volume this week vs. last week on +33123456789."
• "Show me the AI summary of every inbound call yesterday that went to voicemail."

Install

Option A — go install (recommended)

go install github.com/edouard-claude/mcp-withallo@latest

The binary lands at $GOBIN/mcp-withallo (typically ~/go/bin/mcp-withallo). Make sure that directory is on your PATH if you want to invoke it without an absolute path.

Option B — prebuilt binary

Grab the archive matching your OS / architecture from the Releases page and put mcp-withallo somewhere on your PATH.

Option C — build from source

git clone https://github.com/edouard-claude/mcp-withallo
cd mcp-withallo
make build      # or: go build -o mcp-withallo .

Configuration

Get an API key from the Allo dashboard (Settings → API keys) and put it in the ALLO_API_KEY environment variable. The key is sent verbatim in the Authorization header — no Bearer prefix, that's intentional (per Allo docs).

The same JSON config block works for every MCP client; only the file path differs.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "allo": {
      "command": "mcp-withallo",
      "env": { "ALLO_API_KEY": "your-api-key-here" }
    }
  }
}

If mcp-withallo is not on your PATH, replace "command": "mcp-withallo" with the absolute path (run which mcp-withallo to find it — typically $(go env GOPATH)/bin/mcp-withallo). Note that Claude Desktop does not expand ~ in command.

code --add-mcp '{"name":"allo","command":"mcp-withallo","env":{"ALLO_API_KEY":"your-api-key-here"}}'

Tools

All 12 tools are read-only — no SMS sending, no contact mutations, no CRM writes.

Account & directory

Calls (with transcripts)

Conversations & messages

Contacts

Analytics

Smoke test

printf '%s\n' \
  '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"initialize","params":{"protocolVersion":"2025-06-18","capabilities":{},"clientInfo":{"name":"smoke","version":"0"}}}' \
  '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"notifications/initialized"}' \
  '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/list"}' \
  '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":3,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"allo_me","arguments":{}}}' \
  | ALLO_API_KEY="$ALLO_API_KEY" mcp-withallo

tools/list should return 12 tools and allo_me should return your Allo identity. The make smoke-test target runs the same recipe.

Rate limits

Allo enforces two layers (docs):

• Burst — visible in allo_me.rate_limits, typically read_per_second: 20, write_per_second: 5. Hard to hit through Claude (one tool call at a time).
• Daily quota — depends on your plan (e.g. 1000/DAILY). Hits return HTTP 429 with code: API_KEY_QUOTA_EXCEEDED.

When a 429 hits, this server surfaces a single-line tool error like:

Allo API 429 API_KEY_QUOTA_EXCEEDED: DAILY quota exceeded (limit=1000, resets in 3600s). Stop calling and tell the user — do not retry automatically.

The server does not retry automatically — the error reaches the model so the user can decide (wait, switch keys, upgrade). If you want client-side back-off, layer it on top.

Notes & known divergences from the OpenAPI spec

• Pagination conventions differ between API versions. v1 endpoints (calls, contacts, contact-conversation) use page 0-indexed with default size 10. v2 endpoints (conversations list, items search) use page 1-indexed with default size 20. Each tool follows its underlying endpoint's convention.
• Call transcripts ride inside allo_search_calls and allo_get_conversation_item responses under the transcript field — an array of {source, text, time, start_seconds, end_seconds}.
• allo_list_conversations requires allo_number — the live API rejects calls without it despite the OpenAPI spec marking the field optional. Empirically verified, see commit e3c1e9c.
• allo_search_conversation_items enums are aligned to the live API, not the OpenAPI examples: type ∈ {CALL, TEXT_MESSAGE}, result ∈ {ANSWERED, MISSED, TRANSFERRED, VOICEMAIL}, sort ∈ {RELEVANCE, RECENT, OLDEST}.

Development

make build         # build ./mcp-withallo
make test          # go test -race ./...
make lint          # gofmt + go vet (CI-equivalent)
make smoke-test    # end-to-end smoke against the real API (needs ALLO_API_KEY)

The codebase is intentionally tiny: main.go (entry point), client.go (HTTP client), tools.go (every MCP tool definition + handler). To add a new read-only tool, mirror an existing pattern — see CONTRIBUTING.md for the recipe.

Roadmap

Potential additions, all read-only and tracked in issues:

• allo_get_user — single team member by ID.
• allo_batch_get_conversation_items — fetch up to 100 items by ID in one call.
• allo_analytics_outbound — outbound funnel & heatmap.
• CRM read tools — crm/people, crm/companies, crm/deals search & get.
• allo_list_webhooks — read-only listing of configured webhooks.

Want one of these (or something else)? Open an issue.

Contributing

PRs welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md for build steps, the tool-addition pattern, and code style. For security issues, see SECURITY.md — please do not open a public issue for vulnerabilities.

Acknowledgements

Built on mark3labs/mcp-go, the Go SDK for the Model Context Protocol. Inspired by the read-only design choices of getsentry/sentry-mcp and github/github-mcp-server.

License

MIT — © 2026 Edouard Claude.