An AI-to-AI consultation system that enables one AI to "phone a friend" (another AI) for critical thinking, long context reasoning, and complex
Phone a friend mcp server lets Claude, Cursor and other MCP clients work with Phone A Friend directly. An AI-to-AI consultation system that enables one AI to "phone a friend" (another AI) for critical thinking, long context reasoning, and complex problem solving via OpenRouter.
An AI-to-AI consultation system that enables one AI to "phone a friend" (another AI) for critical thinking, long context reasoning, and complex problem solving via OpenRouter.
Once connected, the assistant can call these 7 tools directly:
Provider — CLI FlagOpenAI — --provider openaiOpenRouter — --provider openrouterAnthropic — --provider anthropicGoogle — --provider googlephone_a_friend — 📞 Consult external AI for critical thinking and complex reasoning. Makes API calls to get responsesfax_a_friend — 📠 Generate master prompt file for manual AI consultation. Creates file for copy-paste workflowSetup follows the standard MCP pattern: clone or install the server, then register it in your client's configuration file and restart the client. The configuration snippets on this page cover Claude Desktop, Claude Code and Cursor.
Before the server will start you need to supply 7 environment variables: OPENAI_API_KEY, PHONE_A_FRIEND_MODEL, YOUR_API_KEY, OPENROUTER_API_KEY, ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, GOOGLE_API_KEY, PHONE_A_FRIEND_BASE_URL. Keep credentials in your client's env block or a secrets manager rather than committing them.
AI-service servers chain other models into your assistant, turning a single chat into a small production pipeline. Phone A Friend sits in that group, and the shape of its toolset — Provider, OpenAI, OpenRouter among others — tells you what it is really for. Worth comparing against the other ai services servers in this directory before you commit to one, since several overlap in scope but differ sharply in setup cost and permissions.
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| Provider | CLI Flag |
| OpenAI | --provider openai |
| OpenRouter | --provider openrouter |
| Anthropic | --provider anthropic |
| --provider google | |
| phone_a_friend | 📞 Consult external AI for critical thinking and complex reasoning. Makes API calls to get responses. |
| fax_a_friend | 📠 Generate master prompt file for manual AI consultation. Creates file for copy-paste workflow. |
{
"mcpServers": {
"phone-a-friend": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"phone-a-friend-mcp-server",
"--provider", "openai",
"--api-key", "<YOUR_API_KEY>"
]
}
}
}Configuration as documented by the project. Restart the client after saving.
| Variable | Description | Required |
|---|---|---|
| OPENAI_API_KEY | Credential the server authenticates with. | Yes |
| PHONE_A_FRIEND_MODEL | Configuration value read at startup. | Optional |
| YOUR_API_KEY | Credential the server authenticates with. | Yes |
| OPENROUTER_API_KEY | Credential the server authenticates with. | Yes |
| ANTHROPIC_API_KEY | Credential the server authenticates with. | Yes |
| GOOGLE_API_KEY | Credential the server authenticates with. | Yes |
| PHONE_A_FRIEND_BASE_URL | Endpoint or connection string the server talks to. | Yes |
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