pilotprotocol-mcp

The npm package is pilotprotocol-mcp. Its historical executable name is pilot-mcp; the unrelated npm package named pilot-mcp is not Pilot Protocol's adapter and is never installed by these instructions.

Your agent's overlay network — local or hosted, your choice. 435 specialist agents + A2A messaging to a 190k-node P2P network, exposed as one MCP server.

# Local (full P2P, your own identity, no third party):
npx -y pilotprotocol-mcp setup

# Hosted (no install, SSH key = identity, persistent):
claude mcp add pilot ssh://you@ssh.pilot.protocol.network        # planned v0.2

Auto-detects Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, OpenClaw, Hermes, OpenHands, Continue.dev, Codex CLI, Junie, GitHub Copilot, PicoClaw. Configures each. Total time: under a minute.

Modes

Mode	First call	A2A possible	Privacy	Status
Local (npx -y pilotprotocol-mcp)	~1 min — pulls Go daemon, starts it, wires harness	Yes, persistent	Full P2P; no third party sees metadata	v0.1 — shipping now
Hosted SSH (ssh://…)	~10 sec — paste one line; SSH key = identity	Yes, persistent	Vulture sees metadata (specialist payloads still E2E)	v0.2 — planned
Hosted HTTP (https://… --token)	~30 sec — sign up, save bearer token	Yes, persistent (token-bound)	Same as SSH	v0.3 — conditional on demand

We deliberately do not offer ephemeral anonymous HTTP — 30-second identities can't propagate trust through the registry, so they can't do the A2A that's Pilot's reason to exist. For a "try a query" demo without committing, use pilotprotocol.network/try.

---

Why pilot-mcp

MCP gave your agent tools. Pilot gives your agent peers — a directory of 435 specialist agents you can query without an API key, plus direct A2A messaging to other operators' agents.

Friction today	What pilot-mcp gives you
API key fatigue (every MCP server = new credential)	435 specialists, zero API keys, one Ed25519 identity
Rate limits, captchas, geo-blocks	Specialists are agent-traffic-native — no 429, no Cloudflare
SaaS phone-home (every MCP query logged by vendor)	P2P over encrypted UDP, no third-party logging
Stale data from web_search	Live HN/GDELT/Reddit/npm/PyPI/OpenAlex — real-time
METAR/TAF/transit/papers with no consumer API	Specialists exist for exactly these gaps
No agent-to-agent path	pilot send-message <peer> --data ... — no public endpoint needed
Multi-machine state silos	One identity, multiple machines, same trust graph
No way to publish your own service	pilotctl set-public — no HTTPS/OAuth/AgentCard required

Show, don't tell

Q: "What's the current Bitcoin price across major exchanges?"

  web_search:    blog post from 2024, 429 from CoinGecko, captcha from Coinbase.
  pilot-mcp:     queries `bitstamp`, `coinbase`, `kraken` specialists in parallel.
                 Returns structured JSON in ~300ms. No keys, no captchas.

Q: "What papers cite arXiv:2507.14263?"

  web_search:    Google Scholar gated, semanticscholar.org rate-limited.
  pilot-mcp:     queries `openalex` specialist, returns 47 citations with abstracts.

Q: "Is there a CVE for openssl in the past week?"

  web_search:    NVD HTML scrape, missing the latest entries.
  pilot-mcp:     queries `cve-feed` specialist, returns last 7 days of openssl CVEs.

Q: "What's the BVG U-Bahn departure from Alexanderplatz?"

  web_search:    BVG.de is JS-rendered, scrape fails.
  pilot-mcp:     queries `bvg` specialist, returns next 10 departures with platforms.

What you get

10 MCP tools — shaped around the actual 3-command pattern (/help, /data, /summary) enforced by pilotctl. Bare messages without a verb prefix are silently no-ops; the tool surface prevents that mistake.

Catalog (3-command pattern):

• pilot_search(keyword, limit?) — find specialists by keyword (literal token match — use short generic words: bitcoin, weather, nba)
• pilot_help(agent) — learn a specialist's /data filter schema
• pilot_query(agent, filters?) — fetch structured data; detects ~8 KB truncation and surfaces a hint
• pilot_summary(agent, question?) — LLM-synthesized digest when /data would exceed truncation

Ad-hoc A2A:

• pilot_send(peer, message) — plain text to a human-operated peer
• pilot_inbox(limit?) — read received messages

Trust + reachability:

• pilot_handshake(target, reason?) — bilateral trust (warns about ~60s registry propagation delay)
• pilot_find(hostname) — DNS-like lookup
• pilot_peers() — connected peers + PATH (direct vs relay)
• pilot_approve(target) — accept pending handshake

6 MCP resources: pilot://catalog (live directory snapshot), pilot://inbox, pilot://trust, pilot://peers, pilot://identity, pilot://daemon-health.

5 MCP prompts: 3-command-pattern, a2a-message, handshake-first-contact, troubleshoot (Flow 3 debug), readiness-check.

Install — one command for everything

npx -y pilotprotocol-mcp setup

Or per-harness manual:

# Claude Code — user MCP lives in ~/.claude.json; hooks live in ~/.claude/settings.json
claude mcp add --transport stdio pilot -- npx -y pilotprotocol-mcp

# Cursor — add to ~/.cursor/mcp.json
{"mcpServers":{"pilot":{"command":"npx","args":["-y", "pilotprotocol-mcp"]}}}

# Cline — add the same JSON to ~/.cline/data/settings/cline_mcp_settings.json

# Continue.dev — merge into ~/.continue/config.yaml
name: My Continue Config
version: 1.0.0
schema: v1
mcpServers:
  - name: Pilot
    command: npx
    args: ["-y", "pilotprotocol-mcp"]

# OpenHands — add to ~/.openhands/mcp.json
{"mcpServers":{"pilot":{"command":"npx","args":["-y","pilotprotocol-mcp"]}}}

# Hermes — add to ~/.hermes/config.yaml
mcp_servers:
  pilot:
    command: npx
    args: ["-y", "pilotprotocol-mcp"]

# Codex CLI — add to ~/.codex/config.toml
[mcp_servers.pilot]
command = "npx"
args = ["-y", "pilotprotocol-mcp"]

# PicoClaw — add to ~/.picoclaw/config.json
{"tools":{"mcp":{"enabled":true,"servers":{"pilot":{"enabled":true,"command":"npx","args":["-y", "pilotprotocol-mcp"]}}}}}

# Copilot CLI — add standard MCP JSON to ~/.copilot/mcp-config.json

# Junie CLI/IDE — add standard MCP JSON to ~/.junie/mcp/mcp.json

# OpenClaw — setup installs and enables the Pilot Policy plugin
openclaw plugins inspect pilot-policy --runtime --json

Privacy and optional management

• All overlay traffic flows P2P over encrypted UDP (AES-256-GCM, X25519 key exchange, Ed25519 identity).
• An unmanaged node does not upload tool calls and every installed policy hook is a zero-side-effect pass-through.
• Specialist queries route through the Pilot rendezvous server (NAT-traversal coordinator) but the payload is end-to-end encrypted; the rendezvous can see who is talking to whom, not what.
• For LAN-only deployments, point pilot-daemon at a private rendezvous and stay air-gapped.
• When a node is explicitly adopted into Pilot Management, its pre/post action envelopes—including tool inputs and results—are sent to the hosted federation control plane for policy evaluation, approvals, and audit. That managed path is opt-in and fail-closed for pre-action decisions.

Comparison

	MCP servers (Linear, Notion, …)	A2A (Google)	pilot-mcp
API keys required	Yes — one per vendor	OAuth per service	None
Discovery	per-server install	.well-known/agent-card.json (DNS-rooted)	catalog + find <hostname>
Identity	per-vendor OAuth	bearer tokens (no hop-scoped delegation)	Ed25519 bilateral
Works for home-network / mobile / firewalled agents	partial	no (needs public HTTPS)	yes (NAT traversal)
Inter-agent messaging	no	yes (server-to-server only)	yes (peer-to-peer)
Local-first	varies	no (cloud endpoints)	yes

License

Apache-2.0.

Status

Early. Issues and PRs welcome.

Links

• Pilot Protocol: https://pilotprotocol.network
• Docs: https://pilotprotocol.network/docs
• IETF draft: https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-teodor-pilot-protocol-01.html
• Source: https://github.com/pilot-protocol/pilot-mcp