bft-progress-council-mcp 1.1.2

BFT Progress Council MCP — 5-voter Byzantine council halts agentic loops when no real progress is happening. Stops tokens bleeding on infinite spins. By MEOK AI Labs.

mcp-name: io.github.CSOAI-ORG/bft-progress-council-mcp

BFT Progress Council MCP

🧱 Part of the MEOK A2A Substrate

Run all 12 A2A primitives + this BFT council as one signed pipeline for £499/mo (100K calls), or pay £0.0002/call. See meok.ai/a2a.

Anti-loop guardrail for AI agents

💰 Stops your agent burning tokens on loops

Every agentic coding tool — Cursor, Claude Code, Devin, Aider — bleeds tokens when the agent gets stuck and keeps retrying. This MCP runs a 5-voter Byzantine Fault Tolerant council that halts the loop the moment 3 of 5 voters agree there's no real progress.

Typical save: £10-£200 per agent run depending on agent + task length. Pays for the £29/mo Starter tier the first time it halts a stuck loop.

The problem

You're running an agent (Cursor / Claude Code / Aider / Devin / a custom MCP orchestration). It hits a tricky bug. Or a missing dependency. Or a 403 from an API. Instead of stopping, it just keeps trying. Different prompts, same fundamental error. Each retry costs API tokens. By the time you check, it's spent £50.

Sound familiar? That's because every existing agentic loop has one weakness: it doesn't know whether it's making progress. It only knows whether the last action succeeded. So when it can't tell the difference between "trying harder" and "spinning", it just keeps spinning.

The solution

Five independent voters look at the last N actions + the original goal and each return a verdict. We tally. If 3 of 5 say PROGRESS, continue. If 3 of 5 say STALL / DRIFT / BLOCKED, halt.

Voter	Detects
repetition	Literal action repetition in last 5 actions
outcome_diversity	Identical outcomes / repeated error strings (429, 403, exception messages)
goal_alignment	Drift from the original goal (token overlap)
action_velocity	Rapid-fire spinning with no human-loop pause
artefact_growth	No tangible artefacts being produced (no writes / commits / deploys)

Free tier uses the deterministic heuristic voters (above). Pro tier swaps them for 5 actual LLM voters (Claude Opus + GPT-5 + Gemini 2.5 + Llama 3.3 + Step 3.6) which catch subtler stalls.

Quick install

# uvx (preferred — no install)
uvx bft-progress-council-mcp

# pip
pip install bft-progress-council-mcp

# npx (via @meok-ai bridge)
npx @meok-ai/bft-progress-council-mcp

Add to your Claude Desktop / Cursor / Windsurf MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "bft-progress-council": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["bft-progress-council-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Usage

Three tools to call from your agent loop:

# 1. Start a session at the top of your agent run
{"tool": "start_session", "args": {"goal": "Fix the EU AI Act Article 50 watermarking bug in src/article50.py"}}
# → { session_id: "s_1779...", goal: "...", started_at: "..." }

# 2. Record every action you take
{"tool": "record_action", "args": {
    "session_id": "s_1779...",
    "action": "Edit src/article50.py: add C2PA manifest validation",
    "outcome": "Test still failing on missing-key.png"
}}

# 3. Periodically (every 5-10 actions) — let the council vote
{"tool": "council_vote", "args": {"session_id": "s_1779...", "lookback": 10}}
# → {
#     "verdict": "STALL",
#     "action_recommended": "halt_loop_and_request_new_approach",
#     "tally": {"PROGRESS": 1, "STALL": 3, "DRIFT": 0, "BLOCKED": 1},
#     "votes": [
#       {"voter": "repetition", "verdict": "STALL", "reason": "only 2 unique actions in last 5"},
#       {"voter": "outcome_diversity", "verdict": "BLOCKED", "reason": "4 of 5 outcomes contain 'failing'"},
#       {"voter": "goal_alignment", "verdict": "PROGRESS", "reason": "60% goal-token overlap"},
#       {"voter": "action_velocity", "verdict": "STALL", "reason": "rapid-fire actions (1.2s avg)"},
#       {"voter": "artefact_growth", "verdict": "STALL", "reason": "no commits in last 10"}
#     ],
#     "signed_attestation": { ... HMAC-SHA256 signed ... }
# }

When the verdict is anything other than PROGRESS, the agent stops and either re-anchors to the original goal or escalates to the human. No more silent overnight loops eating tokens.

The maths

Free tier saves you tokens. Here's the simple cost model:

• Avg agent step: ~2,000 tokens (input + output blended)
• Claude Opus 4.7 blended cost: ~£0.025 per 1K tokens
• Each prevented "wasted action loop" averages 5+ extra steps
• One halt = 5 × 2,000 × £0.025/1K = ~£0.25 saved per halt
• A typical multi-hour agent run hits 4-12 stall events
• Per-run saving: £1-£3 in tokens

That's just the free tier. Substrate customers running fleets of agents save £100-£1,000/month with one MCP. £29/mo Starter pays for itself in hours.

Verify your own ROI with the estimate_tokens_saved tool — pass the session ID and it'll calculate the cost saved given your halt history.

Tiers

Tier	Price	What
Free	£0 (MIT)	Heuristic voters, local-only attestations, self-host
Starter	£29/mo	Managed signing key + verify.meok.ai attestation, 10K sessions/mo
Pro	£79/mo	5 actual LLM voters (Claude + GPT + Gemini + Llama + Step), 100K sessions, 24h SLA
A2A Substrate	£499/mo	This + 11 other A2A MCPs (handoff, audit-logger, policy, firewall, etc.)
Universe	£1,499/mo	All 48 MEOK MCPs · 500K calls
Defence	£4,990/mo	Pro + on-prem + dedicated CSM

Buy: https://meok.ai/a2a · https://buy.stripe.com/bJe3cx6WgcMO38142k8k90o

Sister MCPs

Part of the MEOK A2A pack:

• Prompt Injection Firewall → uvx agent-prompt-injection-firewall-mcp
• Audit Logger → uvx agent-audit-logger-mcp
• Policy Enforcement → uvx agent-policy-enforcement-mcp
• Rate Limiter → uvx agent-rate-limiter-mcp
• Certified Handoff → uvx agent-handoff-certified-mcp
• Identity + Trust → uvx agent-identity-trust-mcp

Full catalogue + Anthropic Registry verify links: meok.ai/anthropic-registry

Protocol coverage + Universal PAYG

• ✅ MCP (Anthropic) — native
• ✅ A2A (Google + Linux Foundation, absorbed IBM ACP)
• ✅ IBM ACP — covered via A2A merge
• ◐ Stripe ACP (Agentic Commerce) — Q3 bridge
• ◐ AP2 (Google Agent Payments) — partial
• ◐ x402 (Coinbase HTTP 402) — via api.meok.ai gateway
• → OASF / AGNTCY — Q3 bridge

Option	Price	Best for
Self-host (this MCP)	£0 — MIT	Devs
This MCP Starter	£29/mo	One-MCP teams
Universal PAYG	£29/mo + £0.0002/call	Spiky usage
A2A Substrate	£499/mo	A whole pack
Universe	£1,499/mo	All 48 MCPs

Why this matters for MEOK

Every other MEOK MCP makes you do something. This one tells you when to stop. It's the cheapest insurance policy in the catalogue — and it sits alongside the agent-rate-limiter and agent-audit-logger as the third guardrail in the A2A Substrate.

Wire it up — full stack

This MCP is step 1 of 6 in the MEOK chain that turns one agent action into a fully signed compliance event. See meok.ai/mcp-stack for the 6-MCP chain:

1. bft-progress-council-mcp (this) — anti-loop guardrail
2. agent-token-budget-mcp — hard spend cap
3. agent-content-watermark-mcp — EU AI Act Article 50(2) watermark
4. meok-eu-aigc-icon-mcp — EU Code-of-Practice icon (Nov 2026 cliff)
5. agent-audit-logger-mcp — hash-chained audit trail
6. a2a-governance-bridge-mcp — fold all signatures into one signed event

Output: ONE auditor-defensible evidence event mapped to EU AI Act Articles 12 + 50, DORA Article 17, ISO 42001 clause 9 — plus a public verify URL.

Licence

MIT. By MEOK AI Labs (CSOAI LTD, UK Companies House 16939677). Founder: Nicholas Templeman.

💸 Try MEOK in 30 seconds — instant buy ladder

Tier	Price	What you get	Stripe
Smoke test	£1	Signed sample MCP-Hardening report + Article 50 PDF	https://buy.stripe.com/dRmcN75ScdQS7oh1Uc8k90U
Quick Kit	£9	EU AI Act Article 50 implementation guide (C2PA + EU-Icon)	https://buy.stripe.com/cNi00la8s1460ZT0Q88k90V
Founder Call	£29	30-min 1-on-1 with the founder	https://buy.stripe.com/8x228ta8s6oqbExaqI8k90W

Refundable. UK Stripe — VAT-clean. Builds on the 81-MCP MEOK fleet. Verify any signed report at https://meok.ai/verify.