Better Call Claude

Let Claude—or any MCP-compatible AI agent—call your phone with a short spoken update.

Better Call Claude adds a single, focused MCP tool to your AI agent: call_me. The tool places an outbound call through your own Twilio account and reads a short status message aloud. It is designed for long-running tasks where you want to leave your desk without repeatedly checking a terminal.

Features

• One-command installation and guided configuration
• Automatic Claude Code and Codex MCP registration and skill installation
• Compatible with other local stdio MCP clients
• No hosted Better Call Claude service or background daemon
• Credentials remain on your computer
• Fixed recipient number, message limits, cooldowns, and hourly rate limits
• Wheel and source distribution published on PyPI

Quick start

uvx better-call-claude setup

The guided setup saves your Twilio credentials locally, registers a call_me MCP tool with every detected supported agent, and installs a small skill that teaches the agent when a phone call is appropriate. Restart Claude Code or Codex, then try:

Call me and say the setup worked.

Why this shape?

This first version makes simple outbound voice alerts. There is no public webhook, tunnel, hosted service, or background daemon. Twilio receives inline TwiML and reads the agent's message aloud.

That makes it useful for requests like:

• “Run the migration and call me when it finishes.”
• “Call me if the production health check fails.”
• “In 20 minutes, check the build and call me with the result.”

The scheduling or monitoring still belongs to your agent. Better Call Claude handles the final phone call.

How it works

Claude or another agent
        │
        │  call_me({ message }) over local MCP stdio
        ▼
Better Call Claude on your computer
        │
        │  authenticated Twilio REST request with inline TwiML
        ▼
Twilio ──────────────────────────────► your configured phone

The AI can supply only the spoken message. Your Twilio credentials and destination number are loaded by the local process and are never included in the model's tool arguments.

What you need

• Python 3.10 or newer
• uv (recommended) or pipx
• A Twilio account and voice-capable number
• Claude Code, or another client that supports local stdio MCP servers

Twilio trial accounts can generally call only verified recipients. Calls use your Twilio account and may incur normal voice charges.

During setup you will be asked for your Twilio Account SID, Auth Token, Twilio number, and personal number. Phone numbers must use E.164 format, such as +14155552671. The Auth Token prompt is hidden.

pipx alternative

pipx run better-call-claude setup

Commands

# Guided configuration and agent installation
better-call-claude setup

# Validate configuration without placing a call
better-call-claude doctor

# Place a real test call
better-call-claude call "The deployment finished successfully."

# Start the stdio MCP server (normally launched by your agent)
better-call-claude mcp

For non-interactive setup:

TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID=AC... \
TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN=... \
TWILIO_FROM_NUMBER=+14155550100 \
BETTER_CALL_CLAUDE_NUMBER=+14155550101 \
uvx better-call-claude setup --agent claude

Other MCP clients

uvx better-call-claude setup --agent generic

The command prints a stdio MCP configuration for your client. The server exposes one tool:

call_me(message: str)

The recipient is deliberately absent from the tool input. It is fixed during setup, so an agent cannot use your Twilio account to dial arbitrary numbers.

Select an agent explicitly

uvx better-call-claude setup --agent claude
uvx better-call-claude setup --agent codex
uvx better-call-claude setup --agent all

For Codex, run codex mcp get better-call-claude to verify the connection, then restart Codex. The Codex CLI, IDE extension, and ChatGPT desktop app share MCP configuration on the same Codex host.

Configuration and safety

Configuration is stored at ~/.config/better-call-claude/config.json with owner-only permissions. Set BETTER_CALL_CLAUDE_CONFIG to use a different path. Environment variables override saved values:

Variable	Purpose
TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID	Twilio Account SID
TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN	Twilio Auth Token
TWILIO_FROM_NUMBER	Voice-capable Twilio number
BETTER_CALL_CLAUDE_NUMBER	Fixed recipient
BETTER_CALL_CLAUDE_VOICE	Twilio <Say> voice; default Polly.Joanna
BETTER_CALL_CLAUDE_LANGUAGE	Voice language; default en-US
BETTER_CALL_CLAUDE_PREFIX	Spoken introduction

Built-in guardrails:

• One fixed recipient, hidden from the model except for a masked hint
• Messages capped at 600 characters
• Three calls per hour by default
• A 60-second cooldown between calls
• Skill instructions require explicit or previously granted authorization
• No automatic retry after a failed or unanswered call

The Auth Token is a valuable secret. Do not commit the config file, paste it into a prompt, or share it in logs.

Development

uv sync
uv run pytest
uv run ruff check .
uv build --no-sources

To point Claude Code at a local checkout:

claude mcp add --scope user --transport stdio better-call-claude-dev -- \
  uv --directory "$PWD" run better-call-claude mcp

The integration follows Claude Code's documented local stdio MCP configuration. Twilio calls use the documented Call resource with inline TwiML.

Publishing to PyPI

uv build --no-sources
uv publish --dry-run
UV_PUBLISH_TOKEN=pypi-your-token uv publish

Create an API token in your PyPI account settings and keep it out of the repository and shell history. Test the exact wheel first with uvx --from dist/better_call_claude-0.2.0-py3-none-any.whl better-call-claude --help.

Current limitation

The tool confirms that Twilio accepted and queued the call. It cannot tell whether the user answered or listened to the message. Delivery tracking and two-way conversation would require a reachable webhook service and are intentionally outside this zero-infrastructure MVP.

License

MIT