How to integrate Desktime MCP with LangChain

This guide walks you through connecting Desktime to LangChain using the Composio tool router. By the end, you'll have a working Desktime agent that can list all active projects with tasks, get today's time tracked for each employee, start timing work on 'client website redesign' through natural language commands. This guide will help you understand how to give your LangChain agent real control over a Desktime account through Composio's Desktime MCP server. Before we dive in, let's take a quick look at the key ideas and tools involved.

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Desktime is an automatic time tracking tool for teams and freelancers. It helps you monitor productivity, manage projects, and analyze work habits in real time.

11 Tools

Introduction

This guide walks you through connecting Desktime to LangChain using the Composio tool router. By the end, you'll have a working Desktime agent that can list all active projects with tasks, get today's time tracked for each employee, start timing work on 'client website redesign' through natural language commands.

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

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

Also integrate Desktime with

OpenAI Agents SDKClaude Agent SDKClaude CodeClaude CoworkCodexOpenClawHermesCLIGoogle ADKVercel AI SDKMastra AILlamaIndexCrewAI

TL;DR

Here's what you'll learn:
  • Get and set up your OpenAI and Composio API keys
  • Connect your Desktime project to Composio
  • Create a Tool Router MCP session for Desktime
  • Initialize an MCP client and retrieve Desktime tools
  • Build a LangChain agent that can interact with Desktime
  • Set up an interactive chat interface for testing

What is LangChain?

LangChain is a framework for developing applications powered by language models. It provides tools and abstractions for building agents that can reason, use tools, and maintain conversation context.

Key features include:

  • Agent Framework: Build agents that can use tools and make decisions
  • MCP Integration: Connect to external services through Model Context Protocol adapters
  • Memory Management: Maintain conversation history across interactions
  • Multi-Provider Support: Works with OpenAI, Anthropic, and other LLM providers

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

The Desktime MCP server is an implementation of the Model Context Protocol that connects your AI agent and assistants like Claude, Cursor, etc directly to your Desktime account. It provides structured and secure access to your time tracking, project management, and productivity data, so your agent can perform actions like tracking work hours, managing projects, analyzing employee productivity, and reporting on team activities on your behalf.

  • Automated project and task management: Create new projects, assign optional starter tasks, and retrieve a comprehensive list of active company projects for streamlined organization.
  • Employee and company insights: Instantly fetch detailed company account info, list all employees with their roles and statuses, and access individual employee data for better workforce visibility.
  • Time tracking control: Start or stop tracking work on specific projects and tasks, enabling hands-free, accurate logging of work sessions and project contributions.
  • Productivity and app usage analysis: Retrieve employee project assignments and application usage data to monitor work habits and identify productivity trends across your team.
  • API health and connectivity checks: Use built-in API ping tools to verify Desktime API availability and ensure uninterrupted agent operations.

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 step10 STEPS
1

Prerequisites

Before starting this tutorial, make sure you have:
  • Python 3.10 or higher installed on your system
  • A Composio account with an API key
  • An OpenAI API key
  • Basic familiarity with Python and async programming
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

npm install @composio/langchain @langchain/core @langchain/openai @langchain/mcp-adapters dotenv

Install the required packages for LangChain with MCP support.

What's happening:

  • @composio/langchain provides Composio integration for LangChain
  • @langchain/mcp-adapters enables MCP client connections
  • @langchain/core is the core agent framework
  • dotenv/config loads environment variables
4

Set up environment variables

bash
COMPOSIO_API_KEY=your_composio_api_key_here
COMPOSIO_USER_ID=your_composio_user_id_here
OPENAI_API_KEY=your_openai_api_key_here

Create a .env file in your project root.

What's happening:

  • COMPOSIO_API_KEY authenticates your requests to Composio's API
  • COMPOSIO_USER_ID identifies the user for session management
  • OPENAI_API_KEY enables access to OpenAI's language models
5

Import dependencies

import { Composio } from '@composio/core';
import { LangchainProvider } from '@composio/langchain';
import { MultiServerMCPClient } from "@langchain/mcp-adapters";
import { createAgent } from "langchain";
import * as readline from 'readline';
import 'dotenv/config';

dotenv.config();
What's happening:
  • We're importing LangChain's MCP adapter and Composio SDK
  • The dotenv/config import loads environment variables from your .env file
  • This setup prepares the foundation for connecting LangChain with Desktime functionality through MCP
6

Initialize Composio client

const composioApiKey = process.env.COMPOSIO_API_KEY;
const userId = process.env.COMPOSIO_USER_ID;

if (!composioApiKey) throw new Error('COMPOSIO_API_KEY is not set');
if (!userId) throw new Error('COMPOSIO_USER_ID is not set');

async function main() {
    const composio = new Composio({
        apiKey: composioApiKey as string,
        provider: new LangchainProvider()
    });
What's happening:
  • We're loading the COMPOSIO_API_KEY from environment variables and validating it exists
  • Creating a Composio instance that will manage our connection to Desktime tools
  • Validating that COMPOSIO_USER_ID is also set before proceeding
7

Create a Tool Router session

const session = await composio.create(
    userId as string,
    {
        toolkits: ['desktime']
    }
);

const url = session.mcp.url;
What's happening:
  • We're creating a Tool Router session that gives your agent access to Desktime tools
  • The create method takes the user ID and specifies which toolkits should be available
  • The returned session.mcp.url is the MCP server URL that your agent will use
  • This approach allows the agent to dynamically load and use Desktime tools as needed
8

Configure the agent with the MCP URL

const client = new MultiServerMCPClient({
    "desktime-agent": {
        transport: "http",
        url: url,
        headers: {
            "x-api-key": process.env.COMPOSIO_API_KEY
        }
    }
});

const tools = await client.getTools();

const agent = createAgent({ model: "gpt-5", tools });
What's happening:
  • We're creating a MultiServerMCPClient that connects to our Desktime MCP server via HTTP
  • The client is configured with a name and the URL from our Tool Router session
  • getTools() retrieves all available Desktime tools that the agent can use
  • We're creating a LangChain agent using the GPT-5 model
9

Set up interactive chat interface

let conversationHistory: any[] = [];

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

const rl = readline.createInterface({
    input: process.stdin,
    output: process.stdout,
    prompt: 'You: '
});

rl.prompt();

rl.on('line', async (userInput: string) => {
    const trimmedInput = userInput.trim();

    if (['exit', 'quit', 'bye'].includes(trimmedInput.toLowerCase())) {
        console.log("\nGoodbye!");
        rl.close();
        process.exit(0);
    }

    if (!trimmedInput) {
        rl.prompt();
        return;
    }

    conversationHistory.push({ role: "user", content: trimmedInput });
    console.log("\nAgent is thinking...\n");

    const response = await agent.invoke({ messages: conversationHistory });
    conversationHistory = response.messages;

    const finalResponse = response.messages[response.messages.length - 1]?.content;
    console.log(`Agent: ${finalResponse}\n`);
        
        rl.prompt();
    });

    rl.on('close', () => {
        console.log('\n👋 Session ended.');
        process.exit(0);
    });
What's happening:
  • We initialize an empty conversationHistory list to maintain context across interactions
  • A readline interface is used to continuously accept user input from the command line
  • When a user types a message, it's added to the conversation history and sent to the agent
  • The agent processes the request using the invoke() method with the full conversation history
  • Users can type 'exit', 'quit', or 'bye' to end the chat session gracefully
10

Run the application

main().catch((err) => {
    console.error('Fatal error:', err);
    process.exit(1);
});
What's happening:
  • We call the main() function to start the application

Complete Code

Here's the complete code to get you started with Desktime and LangChain:

import { Composio } from '@composio/core';
import { LangchainProvider } from '@composio/langchain';
import { MultiServerMCPClient } from "@langchain/mcp-adapters";  
import { createAgent } from "langchain";
import * as readline from 'readline';
import 'dotenv/config';

const composioApiKey = process.env.COMPOSIO_API_KEY;
const userId = process.env.COMPOSIO_USER_ID;

if (!composioApiKey) throw new Error('COMPOSIO_API_KEY is not set');
if (!userId) throw new Error('COMPOSIO_USER_ID is not set');

async function main() {
    const composio = new Composio({
        apiKey: composioApiKey as string,
        provider: new LangchainProvider()
    });

    const session = await composio.create(
        userId as string,
        {
            toolkits: ['desktime']
        }
    );

    const url = session.mcp.url;
    
    const client = new MultiServerMCPClient({
        "desktime-agent": {
            transport: "http",
            url: url,
            headers: {
                "x-api-key": process.env.COMPOSIO_API_KEY
            }
        }
    });
    
    const tools = await client.getTools();
  
    const agent = createAgent({ model: "gpt-5", tools });
    
    let conversationHistory: any[] = [];
    
    console.log("Chat started! Type 'exit' or 'quit' to end the conversation.\n");
    console.log("Ask any Desktime related question or task to the agent.\n");
    
    const rl = readline.createInterface({
        input: process.stdin,
        output: process.stdout,
        prompt: 'You: '
    });

    rl.prompt();

    rl.on('line', async (userInput: string) => {
        const trimmedInput = userInput.trim();
        
        if (['exit', 'quit', 'bye'].includes(trimmedInput.toLowerCase())) {
            console.log("\nGoodbye!");
            rl.close();
            process.exit(0);
        }
        
        if (!trimmedInput) {
            rl.prompt();
            return;
        }
        
        conversationHistory.push({ role: "user", content: trimmedInput });
        console.log("\nAgent is thinking...\n");
        
        const response = await agent.invoke({ messages: conversationHistory });
        conversationHistory = response.messages;
        
        const finalResponse = response.messages[response.messages.length - 1]?.content;
        console.log(`Agent: ${finalResponse}\n`);
        
        rl.prompt();
    });

    rl.on('close', () => {
        console.log('\nSession ended.');
        process.exit(0);
    });
}

main().catch((err) => {
    console.error('Fatal error:', err);
    process.exit(1);
});

Conclusion

You've successfully built a LangChain agent that can interact with Desktime through Composio's Tool Router.

Key features of this implementation:

  • Dynamic tool loading through Composio's Tool Router
  • Conversation history maintenance for context-aware responses
  • Async Python provides clean, efficient execution of agent workflows
You can extend this further by adding error handling, implementing specific business logic, or integrating additional Composio toolkits to create multi-app workflows.
TOOLS

Supported Tools

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

Create Project with Optional Task

Tool to create a new project with an optional initial task.

Get Account Details

Retrieves company account configuration including work schedule and timezone settings.

Get All Company Employees

Tool to list all employees in the company, including their roles and statuses.

Get Employee

Tool to retrieve information about a single employee including user info, work settings, and tracking data for a specific date.

Get Employee Apps

Retrieves employee tracking data including tracked apps for a specific date.

Get Employee Projects

Retrieves comprehensive employee project tracking data including project assignments, time tracking metrics, work hours, and productivity statistics for a specific employee and date.

Get Employee Basic Data

Retrieve an employee's basic information and daily tracking statistics from DeskTime.

Get Projects List

Tool to retrieve all active projects for the company, including related tasks.

Ping DeskTime API

Tool to check the API's availability and confirm the service is operational.

Start Project Task

Starts time tracking for a specified project and optional task in DeskTime.

Stop Project Task

Tool to stop tracking time for a specified project and optional task.

FRAMEWORKS

How to build Desktime MCP Agent with another framework

OpenAI Agents SDK logo

OpenAI Agents SDK

Use Desktime MCP with OpenAI Agents SDK

Claude Agent SDK logo

Claude Agent SDK

Use Desktime MCP with Claude Agent SDK

Claude Code logo

Claude Code

Use Desktime MCP with Claude Code

Claude Cowork logo

Claude Cowork

Use Desktime MCP with Claude Cowork

Codex logo

Codex

Use Desktime MCP with Codex

OpenClaw logo

OpenClaw

Use Desktime MCP with OpenClaw

Hermes logo

Hermes

Use Desktime MCP with Hermes

CLI logo

CLI

Use Desktime MCP with CLI

Google ADK logo

Google ADK

Use Desktime MCP with Google ADK

Vercel AI SDK logo

Vercel AI SDK

Use Desktime MCP with Vercel AI SDK

Mastra AI logo

Mastra AI

Use Desktime MCP with Mastra AI

LlamaIndex logo

LlamaIndex

Use Desktime MCP with LlamaIndex

CrewAI logo

CrewAI

Use Desktime MCP with CrewAI

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

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

Yes, you can. LangChain 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 Desktime tools.

Yes, absolutely. You can configure which Desktime 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 Desktime data and credentials are handled as safely as possible.

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