tbcontracts-mcp

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that exposes token-budget-contracts as tools, so any MCP-aware client (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, etc.) can manage token budgets across a multi-agent LLM system.

What this actually does

Multi-agent orchestrators (a planner spawning a researcher, a writer, a critic, ...) burn tokens unevenly. A high-priority agent can starve mid-task while a low-priority agent sits on unused budget. This server's one job is answering, in real time: given these agents' priorities and current spend, how should the remaining budget move right now?

It does this by wrapping token-budget-contracts' priority-weighted Reallocator: spare budget flows from idle or lower-priority agents to whichever agent is actually starved, never below a donor's protected minimum reserve, and never "uphill" from a more important agent to a less important one.

This is not a cost-tracking dashboard or a network gateway. See Honest scope below.

Install

pip install tbcontracts-mcp

This pulls in token-budget-contracts>=0.3.0 and opentelemetry-api as dependencies. Requires Python 3.10+ (see Why not Python 3.9).

Tools

Every tool takes a strict, typed JSON input schema and returns structured JSON ({"success": true/false, ...}) - never free text - so a calling agent or orchestrator can parse the result programmatically.

Error handling

Unknown agent IDs, invalid input, and budget-exceeded conditions all come back as a structured error, never a stack trace:

{
  "success": false,
  "error": {
    "type": "unknown_agent",
    "message": "Agent 'ghost' was never registered. Call register_agent first.",
    "agent_id": "ghost",
    "known_agents": ["critic", "researcher"]
  }
}

Error type is one of unknown_agent, invalid_input, budget_exceeded, tbcontracts_error, or internal_error. A bad tool call never crashes the server process - the MCP client keeps working.

Quick start (as a library, for testing)

from tbcontracts_mcp import server

server.register_agent(agent_id="researcher", priority=3, max_tokens=4000)
server.register_agent(agent_id="critic", priority=1, max_tokens=2000)

server.record_spend(agent_id="researcher", input_tokens=3800, output_tokens=100)
# -> over budget by 400 tokens; automatically borrows from critic

plan = server.request_reallocation(agent_id="researcher", tokens_needed=1000)
print(plan)

Normally you won't call these functions directly - an MCP client calls them as tools over stdio. See the client configs below.

Using it from an MCP client

The server runs over stdio and needs no network setup - just point your client at the tbcontracts-mcp command.

Claude Code

claude mcp add tbcontracts -- tbcontracts-mcp

Or add it directly to .mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tbcontracts": {
      "command": "tbcontracts-mcp"
    }
  }
}

Claude Desktop

Add to claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tbcontracts": {
      "command": "tbcontracts-mcp"
    }
  }
}

Cursor

Add to .cursor/mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tbcontracts": {
      "command": "tbcontracts-mcp"
    }
  }
}

Any of these can equally run it via python -m tbcontracts_mcp instead of the console script, e.g. if you've installed it into a specific venv:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tbcontracts": {
      "command": "/path/to/venv/bin/python",
      "args": ["-m", "tbcontracts_mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Observability

Spend recorded through record_spend is emitted two ways, both additive to your existing observability stack rather than replacing it:

1. The underlying library's own OTel spans. token-budget-contracts already instruments every governance decision (registration, spend, reallocation) as an OpenTelemetry span when telemetry is enabled. This server wires record_spend straight through that existing hook rather than building a parallel tracer - set TBCONTRACTS_MCP_OTEL=1 in the server's environment to turn it on (uses the global OTel tracer provider; configure your exporter the usual OTel way).
2. A gen_ai.client.token.usage counter, following the emerging OpenTelemetry gen_ai.* semantic conventions, emitted via opentelemetry-api for every record_spend call. This tracks raw input/output token counts per agent, not pre-computed dollar cost - pricing tables change constantly and a token counter shouldn't be coupled to one. Attach whatever OTel MeterProvider/exporter you like in the process that launches this server; if none is configured, this is a no-op.

Honest scope

tbcontracts-mcp is the allocation-decision layer for one thing: priority-weighted budget reallocation between agents you've already told it about. It is meant to be composed with other tools, not to replace them. Specifically, it does not:

• do cross-provider cost tracking. It emits raw token counters, not dollar costs, and has no notion of a pricing table for OpenAI, Anthropic, or anyone else.
• do network-level rate limiting or gateway routing. It doesn't sit in the request path between your app and an LLM provider, and it can't throttle or route calls. Tools like Bifrost, MuleSoft, or Solo.io's gateways already do that well - use one of those alongside this.
• replace an observability platform. It emits spans/counters you can send to Grafana, Datadog, Honeycomb, etc., but it isn't a dashboard, storage backend, or alerting system itself.

What it does do: given the agents you've registered and their current spend, decide - and actually execute - how unused budget should move between them right now, based on priority.

Why not Python 3.9?

token-budget-contracts itself supports Python 3.9+, but the official mcp Python SDK this server depends on has never supported Python 3.9 (it requires 3.10+ on every released version). This package therefore requires Python 3.10+, even though the library it wraps does not.

Development

git clone https://github.com/swaranshu-borgaonkar/tbcontracts-mcp
cd tbcontracts-mcp
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest -v

License

MIT for the code in this package. token-budget-contracts, which this server wraps, implements the governance model described in a pending U.S. provisional patent application (see its own README for details). If you plan to use this commercially at scale, consult your own counsel.