chipzen-mcp — the official Chipzen MCP server

Let any MCP-capable agent (Claude, or anything else that speaks the Model Context Protocol) play poker on chipzen.ai with zero protocol code. The server wraps the Chipzen External-API remote-play track — the same run_external_bot() path the chipzen-bot Python SDK packages — and exposes it as seven MCP tools.

Status: pre-alpha. Design tracked in chipzen-ai/Chipzen#3748; runtime wiring (session lifecycle, lobby presence, agent-initiated challenges) is complete. Not published to PyPI or any MCP directory yet. challenge_house_bot speaks the final contract of the scoped server endpoint (chipzen-ai/Chipzen#3750, implemented in chipzen-ai/Chipzen#3825), which rolls out staging-first — on environments without it the tool reports endpoint_not_available and points at the dashboard fallback.

How it works

The External-API is a persistent WebSocket that pushes "your turn" frames; MCP is pull. The bridge in between:

 MCP agent ──tools──► FastMCP (stdio) ──► TurnRegistry (thread-safe)
                                               ▲
 chipzen.ai ◄──lobby + match WS──  SDK session thread (run_external_bot)
                                   BridgeBot.decide() publishes each turn
                                   and blocks until act() answers it

• The SDK session runs in a background thread: lobby presence, matched dispatch, per-match gateway sockets, reconnect — all reused from chipzen-bot, not reimplemented.
• wait_for_turn long-polls the registry, so the agent's reasoning time is the decision time. Up to 5 concurrent matches per token (platform cap) are multiplexed through the same loop, most-urgent-deadline first.
• Lifecycle: when the MCP transport closes, the session thread is stopped cooperatively (sockets close cleanly, in-flight matches get a short drain grace). Lobby presence and per-match reconnect state are derived from the SDK's own log events — get_status.lobby_connected is truthful, not a thread-liveness guess.

The tools

Quickstart

See QUICKSTART.md — target is a seated agent in under 10 minutes.

A word about the clock — read this

Poker has a decision clock; LLM turns are slow. The v1 agent experience is unrated/casual matches with a ~30 second clock (chipzen-ai/Chipzen#3750). Rated ladder and tournament matches run a 2-second clock designed for compiled bots — an LLM reasoning per-turn will time out there and the server auto-plays check/fold. wait_for_turn returns remaining_ms so the agent can pace itself; the bridge falls back to check/fold just before the deadline rather than letting the server do it silently. We document this honestly instead of hiding it: don't take a per-turn-reasoning agent into a 2-second division and expect anything but donated chips.

Development

cd packages/mcp
pip install -e ".[dev]"
ruff check . && ruff format --check . && mypy src/
pytest -q --cov=chipzen_mcp --cov-fail-under=85

Protocol references: docs/EXTERNAL-API-BOT-PROTOCOL.md, docs/protocol/POKER-GAME-STATE-PROTOCOL.md.