How to integrate Cats MCP with Autogen

This guide walks you through connecting Cats to AutoGen using the Composio tool router. By the end, you'll have a working Cats agent that can show me five random cat images, list popular cat breeds with photos, find unique cat facts for trivia through natural language commands. This guide will help you understand how to give your AutoGen agent real control over a Cats account through Composio's Cats MCP server. Before we dive in, let's take a quick look at the key ideas and tools involved.

Cats logoCats
Api Key

Cats is an API with a huge library of cat images, breed data, and cat facts. It makes finding adorable cat photos and trivia effortless for your apps and users.

18 Tools

Introduction

This guide walks you through connecting Cats to AutoGen using the Composio tool router. By the end, you'll have a working Cats agent that can show me five random cat images, list popular cat breeds with photos, find unique cat facts for trivia through natural language commands.

This guide will help you understand how to give your AutoGen agent real control over a Cats account through Composio's Cats MCP server.

Before we dive in, let's take a quick look at the key ideas and tools involved.

Also integrate Cats with

TL;DR

Here's what you'll learn:
  • Get and set up your OpenAI and Composio API keys
  • Install the required dependencies for Autogen and Composio
  • Initialize Composio and create a Tool Router session for Cats
  • Wire that MCP URL into Autogen using McpWorkbench and StreamableHttpServerParams
  • Configure an Autogen AssistantAgent that can call Cats tools
  • Run a live chat loop where you ask the agent to perform Cats operations

What is AutoGen?

Autogen is a framework for building multi-agent conversational AI systems from Microsoft. It enables you to create agents that can collaborate, use tools, and maintain complex workflows.

Key features include:

  • Multi-Agent Systems: Build collaborative agent workflows
  • MCP Workbench: Native support for Model Context Protocol tools
  • Streaming HTTP: Connect to external services through streamable HTTP
  • AssistantAgent: Pre-built agent class for tool-using assistants

What is the Cats MCP server, and what's possible with it?

The Cats MCP server is an implementation of the Model Context Protocol that connects your AI agent and assistants like Claude, Cursor, etc directly to your Cats account. It provides structured and secure access to a wide collection of cat images, breed information, and fun feline facts, so your agent can fetch cat data, browse curated cat images, and pull breed details on your behalf.

  • Portals listing for cat resources: Instruct your agent to list and browse all available cat-related portals, making it easy to explore organized collections of cat images and data.
  • Metadata exploration with pagination: Have your agent efficiently page through vast cat collections, ensuring you can access just the right portal or dataset without missing a thing.
  • On-demand cat image discovery: Let your agent find and retrieve high-quality cat images from the API’s large, curated library—perfect for enrichment or just a dose of cuteness.
  • Access to detailed breed and fact data: Ask your agent to pull up detailed info on cat breeds and fun facts, making it a handy assistant for both research and entertainment.

What is the Composio tool router, and how does it fit here?

What is Composio SDK?

Composio's Composio SDK helps agents find the right tools for a task at runtime. You can plug in multiple toolkits (like Gmail, HubSpot, and GitHub), and the agent will identify the relevant app and action to complete multi-step workflows. This can reduce token usage and improve the reliability of tool calls. Read more here: Getting started with Composio SDK

The tool router generates a secure MCP URL that your agents can access to perform actions.

How the Composio SDK works

The Composio SDK follows a three-phase workflow:

  1. Discovery: Searches for tools matching your task and returns relevant toolkits with their details.
  2. Authentication: Checks for active connections. If missing, creates an auth config and returns a connection URL via Auth Link.
  3. Execution: Executes the action using the authenticated connection.

Step-by-step Guide

Step by step08 STEPS
1

Prerequisites

You will need:

  • A Composio API key
  • An OpenAI API key (used by Autogen's OpenAIChatCompletionClient)
  • A Cats account you can connect to Composio
  • Some basic familiarity with Autogen and Python async
2

Getting API Keys for OpenAI and Composio

OpenAI API Key
  • Go to the OpenAI dashboard and create an API key. You'll need credits to use the models, or you can connect to another model provider.
  • Keep the API key safe.
Composio API Key
  • Log in to the Composio dashboard.
  • Navigate to your API settings and generate a new API key.
  • Store this key securely as you'll need it for authentication.
3

Install dependencies

bash
pip install composio python-dotenv
pip install autogen-agentchat autogen-ext-openai autogen-ext-tools

Install Composio, Autogen extensions, and dotenv.

What's happening:

  • composio connects your agent to Cats via MCP
  • autogen-agentchat provides the AssistantAgent class
  • autogen-ext-openai provides the OpenAI model client
  • autogen-ext-tools provides MCP workbench support

4

Set up environment variables

bash
COMPOSIO_API_KEY=your-composio-api-key
OPENAI_API_KEY=your-openai-api-key
USER_ID=your-user-identifier@example.com

Create a .env file in your project folder.

What's happening:

  • COMPOSIO_API_KEY is required to talk to Composio
  • OPENAI_API_KEY is used by Autogen's OpenAI client
  • USER_ID is how Composio identifies which user's Cats connections to use
5

Import dependencies and create Tool Router session

python
import asyncio
import os
from dotenv import load_dotenv
from composio import Composio

from autogen_agentchat.agents import AssistantAgent
from autogen_ext.models.openai import OpenAIChatCompletionClient
from autogen_ext.tools.mcp import McpWorkbench, StreamableHttpServerParams

load_dotenv()

async def main():
    # Initialize Composio and create a Cats session
    composio = Composio(api_key=os.getenv("COMPOSIO_API_KEY"))
    session = composio.create(
        user_id=os.getenv("USER_ID"),
        toolkits=["cats"]
    )
    url = session.mcp.url
What's happening:
  • load_dotenv() reads your .env file
  • Composio(api_key=...) initializes the SDK
  • create(...) creates a Tool Router session that exposes Cats tools
  • session.mcp.url is the MCP endpoint that Autogen will connect to
6

Configure MCP parameters for Autogen

python
# Configure MCP server parameters for Streamable HTTP
server_params = StreamableHttpServerParams(
    url=url,
    timeout=30.0,
    sse_read_timeout=300.0,
    terminate_on_close=True,
    headers={"x-api-key": os.getenv("COMPOSIO_API_KEY")}
)

Autogen expects parameters describing how to talk to the MCP server. That is what StreamableHttpServerParams is for.

What's happening:

  • url points to the Tool Router MCP endpoint from Composio
  • timeout is the HTTP timeout for requests
  • sse_read_timeout controls how long to wait when streaming responses
  • terminate_on_close=True cleans up the MCP server process when the workbench is closed
7

Create the model client and agent

python
# Create model client
model_client = OpenAIChatCompletionClient(
    model="gpt-5",
    api_key=os.getenv("OPENAI_API_KEY")
)

# Use McpWorkbench as context manager
async with McpWorkbench(server_params) as workbench:
    # Create Cats assistant agent with MCP tools
    agent = AssistantAgent(
        name="cats_assistant",
        description="An AI assistant that helps with Cats operations.",
        model_client=model_client,
        workbench=workbench,
        model_client_stream=True,
        max_tool_iterations=10
    )

What's happening:

  • OpenAIChatCompletionClient wraps the OpenAI model for Autogen
  • McpWorkbench connects the agent to the MCP tools
  • AssistantAgent is configured with the Cats tools from the workbench
8

Run the interactive chat loop

python
print("Chat started! Type 'exit' or 'quit' to end the conversation.\n")
print("Ask any Cats related question or task to the agent.\n")

# Conversation loop
while True:
    user_input = input("You: ").strip()

    if user_input.lower() in ["exit", "quit", "bye"]:
        print("\nGoodbye!")
        break

    if not user_input:
        continue

    print("\nAgent is thinking...\n")

    # Run the agent with streaming
    try:
        response_text = ""
        async for message in agent.run_stream(task=user_input):
            if hasattr(message, "content") and message.content:
                response_text = message.content

        # Print the final response
        if response_text:
            print(f"Agent: {response_text}\n")
        else:
            print("Agent: I encountered an issue processing your request.\n")

    except Exception as e:
        print(f"Agent: Sorry, I encountered an error: {str(e)}\n")
What's happening:
  • The script prompts you in a loop with You:
  • Autogen passes your input to the model, which decides which Cats tools to call via MCP
  • agent.run_stream(...) yields streaming messages as the agent thinks and calls tools
  • Typing exit, quit, or bye ends the loop

Complete Code

Here's the complete code to get you started with Cats and AutoGen:

python
import asyncio
import os
from dotenv import load_dotenv
from composio import Composio

from autogen_agentchat.agents import AssistantAgent
from autogen_ext.models.openai import OpenAIChatCompletionClient
from autogen_ext.tools.mcp import McpWorkbench, StreamableHttpServerParams

load_dotenv()

async def main():
    # Initialize Composio and create a Cats session
    composio = Composio(api_key=os.getenv("COMPOSIO_API_KEY"))
    session = composio.create(
        user_id=os.getenv("USER_ID"),
        toolkits=["cats"]
    )
    url = session.mcp.url

    # Configure MCP server parameters for Streamable HTTP
    server_params = StreamableHttpServerParams(
        url=url,
        timeout=30.0,
        sse_read_timeout=300.0,
        terminate_on_close=True,
        headers={"x-api-key": os.getenv("COMPOSIO_API_KEY")}
    )

    # Create model client
    model_client = OpenAIChatCompletionClient(
        model="gpt-5",
        api_key=os.getenv("OPENAI_API_KEY")
    )

    # Use McpWorkbench as context manager
    async with McpWorkbench(server_params) as workbench:
        # Create Cats assistant agent with MCP tools
        agent = AssistantAgent(
            name="cats_assistant",
            description="An AI assistant that helps with Cats operations.",
            model_client=model_client,
            workbench=workbench,
            model_client_stream=True,
            max_tool_iterations=10
        )

        print("Chat started! Type 'exit' or 'quit' to end the conversation.\n")
        print("Ask any Cats related question or task to the agent.\n")

        # Conversation loop
        while True:
            user_input = input("You: ").strip()

            if user_input.lower() in ['exit', 'quit', 'bye']:
                print("\nGoodbye!")
                break

            if not user_input:
                continue

            print("\nAgent is thinking...\n")

            # Run the agent with streaming
            try:
                response_text = ""
                async for message in agent.run_stream(task=user_input):
                    if hasattr(message, 'content') and message.content:
                        response_text = message.content

                # Print the final response
                if response_text:
                    print(f"Agent: {response_text}\n")
                else:
                    print("Agent: I encountered an issue processing your request.\n")

            except Exception as e:
                print(f"Agent: Sorry, I encountered an error: {str(e)}\n")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    asyncio.run(main())

Conclusion

You now have an Autogen assistant wired into Cats through Composio's Tool Router and MCP. From here you can:
  • Add more toolkits to the toolkits list, for example notion or hubspot
  • Refine the agent description to point it at specific workflows
  • Wrap this script behind a UI, Slack bot, or internal tool
Once the pattern is clear for Cats, you can reuse the same structure for other MCP-enabled apps with minimal code changes.
TOOLS

Supported Tools

Every Cats action and event your agent gets out of the box.

Create Favourite

Tool to save an image as a favourite to your account.

Create Vote

Tool to vote on a cat image.

Delete Favourite

Tool to delete a favourite from your account by its ID.

Delete Image

Delete an uploaded image from your account by its ID.

Delete Vote

Tool to delete a vote from your account by its ID.

Get Cat Breed by ID

Tool to get detailed information about a specific cat breed by its ID.

Get Favourite by ID

Tool to retrieve a specific favourite by its unique ID.

Get Cat Image by ID

Tool to retrieve a specific cat image by its unique ID.

Get Image Analysis

Get machine learning analysis results for an uploaded image.

Get Image Breeds

Tool to retrieve breed information associated with a specific cat image.

Get Cat Breeds

Retrieves a paginated list of cat breeds from The Cat API.

Get Vote by ID

Retrieves a specific vote by its unique ID from The Cat API.

List Image Categories

Retrieves a list of all active image categories from The Cat API.

List Favourites

Tool to get all favourites belonging to your account.

List Uploaded Images

Tool to get all images uploaded to your account via /images/upload.

List Votes

Tool to retrieve all votes you have created.

Search Cat Breeds

Search for cat breeds by name.

Search Cat Images

Search for random cat images with optional filters.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

With a standalone Cats MCP server, the agents and LLMs can only access a fixed set of Cats tools tied to that server. However, with the Composio Tool Router, agents can dynamically load tools from Cats and many other apps based on the task at hand, all through a single MCP endpoint.

Yes, you can. Autogen fully supports MCP integration. You get structured tool calling, message history handling, and model orchestration while Tool Router takes care of discovering and serving the right Cats tools.

Yes, absolutely. You can configure which Cats scopes and actions are allowed when connecting your account to Composio. You can also bring your own OAuth credentials or API configuration so you keep full control over what the agent can do.

All sensitive data such as tokens, keys, and configuration is fully encrypted at rest and in transit. Composio is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant and follows strict security practices so your Cats data and credentials are handled as safely as possible.

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