Give your agent its own server

By AgentMetal June 28, 2026 4 min read

The Model Context Protocol lets a model call tools. @agentmetal/mcp is an MCP server that turns the whole lifecycle of a Linux box — buy, inspect, run commands, firewall, tear down — into tools your agent can call, with USDC payments signed locally by your wallet. Point Claude (or Cursor, or any MCP client) at it and your agent can stand up its own compute on demand.

1. Add the server to your MCP client

The package runs over npx, so there is nothing to install globally. Give it a wallet private key — it signs the x402 payment locally and never sends the key anywhere:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "agentmetal": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@agentmetal/mcp"],
      "env": { "WALLET_PRIVATE_KEY": "0x…" }
    }
  }
}

Fund that wallet with a little USDC on Base (a day of nano is $1.20). Restart the client and the tools appear.

2. The 13 tools your agent gets

With a key configured, the local server registers the full lifecycle:

# buy & inspect
get_catalog        provision_server   get_server        list_servers
# operate
exec_command       reboot_server      server_logs       extend_server
# secure & end
get_firewall       manage_firewall    destroy_server
# attach a human account (optional)
claim_account      verify_claim

That is enough for an agent to run an entire workload unattended: price it with get_catalog, buy with provision_server, push work through exec_command, lock the box down with manage_firewall, keep it alive with extend_server, and release it with destroy_server when the job is done.

3. Just ask

Because the tools are self-describing, you drive it in plain language:

you › Spin up a nano box for a day, clone my repo, run the test suite,
        paste me the output, then destroy it.

The agent calls provision_server (paying the $1.20 itself), waits for SSH, exec_commands the clone and test run, returns the logs, and destroy_servers the box — all without you touching a console. Every provisioned box also carries a /root/SERVER.md birth certificate, so even a fresh agent that SSHes in knows what it's standing on and how to renew or clone it.

No key? Use the keyless remote tools

You can wire up the hosted endpoint at https://api.agentmetal.dev/mcp with no wallet at all. It exposes a read-and-quote subset — list_plans, get_payment_options, get_server, list_servers — so an agent can browse and price servers, then hand a payment link to a human or escalate to the local signer when it's ready to actually buy.

Where to go next

The skill and plugin live in the public agentmetal/agents repo; the agent manual is llms.txt; the protocol behind the payments is explained in What is x402?. For the raw HTTP path without MCP, see how an agent rents its own server.