How to integrate Emailoctopus MCP with OpenAI Agents SDK

This guide walks you through connecting Emailoctopus to the OpenAI Agents SDK using the Composio tool router. By the end, you'll have a working Emailoctopus agent that can add new subscribers to your newsletter list, unsubscribe a user from marketing emails, list all recent email campaigns sent through natural language commands. This guide will help you understand how to give your OpenAI Agents SDK agent real control over a Emailoctopus account through Composio's Emailoctopus MCP server. Before we dive in, let's take a quick look at the key ideas and tools involved.

Emailoctopus logoEmailoctopus
Api Key

EmailOctopus is a straightforward email marketing platform for creating, sending, and analyzing campaigns. It helps you grow and engage your audience with affordable, easy-to-use tools.

20 Tools

Introduction

This guide walks you through connecting Emailoctopus to the OpenAI Agents SDK using the Composio tool router. By the end, you'll have a working Emailoctopus agent that can add new subscribers to your newsletter list, unsubscribe a user from marketing emails, list all recent email campaigns sent through natural language commands.

This guide will help you understand how to give your OpenAI Agents SDK agent real control over a Emailoctopus account through Composio's Emailoctopus MCP server.

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

Also integrate Emailoctopus with

TL;DR

Here's what you'll learn:
  • Get and set up your OpenAI and Composio API keys
  • Install the necessary dependencies
  • Initialize Composio and create a Tool Router session for Emailoctopus
  • Configure an AI agent that can use Emailoctopus as a tool
  • Run a live chat session where you can ask the agent to perform Emailoctopus operations

What is OpenAI Agents SDK?

The OpenAI Agents SDK is a lightweight framework for building AI agents that can use tools and maintain conversation state. It provides a simple interface for creating agents with hosted MCP tool support.

Key features include:

  • Hosted MCP Tools: Connect to external services through hosted MCP endpoints
  • SQLite Sessions: Persist conversation history across interactions
  • Simple API: Clean interface with Agent, Runner, and tool configuration
  • Streaming Support: Real-time response streaming for interactive applications

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

The Emailoctopus MCP server is an implementation of the Model Context Protocol that connects your AI agent and assistants like Claude, Cursor, etc directly to your Emailoctopus account. It provides structured and secure access to your subscriber lists, contacts, and campaigns, so your agent can perform actions like managing lists, adding contacts, launching campaigns, and handling unsubscriptions on your behalf.

  • Seamless contact management: Your agent can create new contacts, update details, or remove subscribers from your marketing lists in seconds.
  • Mailing list creation and organization: Effortlessly set up new mailing lists and keep your audience segmented for targeted campaigns.
  • Campaign insights and retrieval: Instantly access details about your recent email campaigns, including summaries and performance data.
  • Automated unsubscriptions and compliance: Quickly unsubscribe contacts or delete them to keep your lists clean and privacy-compliant.
  • Bulk list management: Retrieve and organize all mailing lists in your account, making it easy to scale and update your marketing efforts.

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 step09 STEPS
1

Prerequisites

Before starting, make sure you have:
  • Composio API Key and OpenAI API Key
  • Primary know-how of OpenAI Agents SDK
  • A live Emailoctopus project
  • Some knowledge of Python or Typescript
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
3

Install dependencies

npm install @composio/openai-agents @openai/agents dotenv

Install the Composio SDK and the OpenAI Agents SDK.

4

Set up environment variables

bash
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...your-api-key
COMPOSIO_API_KEY=your-api-key
USER_ID=composio_user@gmail.com

Create a .env file and add your OpenAI and Composio API keys.

5

Import dependencies

import 'dotenv/config';
import { Composio } from '@composio/core';
import { OpenAIAgentsProvider } from '@composio/openai-agents';
import { Agent, hostedMcpTool, run, OpenAIConversationsSession } from '@openai/agents';
import * as readline from 'readline';
What's happening:
  • You're importing all necessary libraries.
  • The Composio and OpenAIAgentsProvider classes are imported to connect your OpenAI agent to Composio tools like Emailoctopus.
6

Set up the Composio instance

dotenv.config();

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

if (!composioApiKey) {
  throw new Error('COMPOSIO_API_KEY is not set. Create a .env file with COMPOSIO_API_KEY=your_key');
}
if (!userId) {
  throw new Error('USER_ID is not set');
}

// Initialize Composio
const composio = new Composio({
  apiKey: composioApiKey,
  provider: new OpenAIAgentsProvider(),
});
What's happening:
  • dotenv.config() loads your .env file so COMPOSIO_API_KEY and USER_ID are available as environment variables.
  • Creating a Composio instance using the API Key and OpenAIAgentsProvider class.
7

Create a Tool Router session

// Create Tool Router session for Emailoctopus
const session = await composio.create(userId as string, {
  toolkits: ['emailoctopus'],
});
const mcpUrl = session.mcp.url;

What is happening:

  • You give the Tool Router the user id and the toolkits you want available. Here, it is only emailoctopus.
  • The router checks the user's Emailoctopus connection and prepares the MCP endpoint.
  • The returned session.mcp.url is the MCP URL that your agent will use to access Emailoctopus.
  • This approach keeps things lightweight and lets the agent request Emailoctopus tools only when needed during the conversation.
8

Configure the agent

// Configure agent with MCP tool
const agent = new Agent({
  name: 'Assistant',
  model: 'gpt-5',
  instructions:
    'You are a helpful assistant that can access Emailoctopus. Help users perform Emailoctopus operations through natural language.',
  tools: [
    hostedMcpTool({
      serverLabel: 'tool_router',
      serverUrl: mcpUrl,
      headers: { 'x-api-key': composioApiKey },
      requireApproval: 'never',
    }),
  ],
});
What's happening:
  • We're creating an Agent instance with a name, model (gpt-5), and clear instructions about its purpose.
  • The agent's instructions tell it that it can access Emailoctopus and help with queries, inserts, updates, authentication, and fetching database information.
  • The tools array includes a hostedMcpTool that connects to the MCP server URL we created earlier.
  • The headers object includes the Composio API key for secure authentication with the MCP server.
  • requireApproval: 'never' means the agent can execute Emailoctopus operations without asking for permission each time, making interactions smoother.
9

Start chat loop and handle conversation

// Keep conversation state across turns
const conversationSession = new OpenAIConversationsSession();

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

console.log('\nComposio Tool Router session created.');
console.log('\nChat started. Type your requests below.');
console.log("Commands: 'exit', 'quit', or 'q' to end\n");

try {
  const first = await run(agent, 'What can you help me with?', { session: conversationSession });
  console.log(`Assistant: ${first.finalOutput}\n`);
} catch (e) {
  console.error('Error:', e instanceof Error ? e.message : e, '\n');
}

rl.prompt();

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

  if (['exit', 'quit', 'q'].includes(text.toLowerCase())) {
    console.log('Goodbye!');
    rl.close();
    process.exit(0);
  }

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

  try {
    const result = await run(agent, text, { session: conversationSession });
    console.log(`\nAssistant: ${result.finalOutput}\n`);
  } catch (e) {
    console.error('Error:', e instanceof Error ? e.message : e, '\n');
  }

  rl.prompt();
});

rl.on('close', () => {
  console.log('\n👋 Session ended.');
  process.exit(0);
});
What's happening:
  • The program prints a session URL that you visit to authorize Emailoctopus.
  • After authorization, the chat begins.
  • Each message you type is processed by the agent using run().
  • The responses are printed to the console.
  • Typing exit, quit, or q cleanly ends the chat.

Complete Code

Here's the complete code to get you started with Emailoctopus and OpenAI Agents SDK:

import 'dotenv/config';
import { Composio } from '@composio/core';
import { OpenAIAgentsProvider } from '@composio/openai-agents';
import { Agent, hostedMcpTool, run, OpenAIConversationsSession } from '@openai/agents';
import * as readline from 'readline';

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

if (!composioApiKey) {
  throw new Error('COMPOSIO_API_KEY is not set. Create a .env file with COMPOSIO_API_KEY=your_key');
}
if (!userId) {
  throw new Error('USER_ID is not set');
}

// Initialize Composio
const composio = new Composio({
  apiKey: composioApiKey,
  provider: new OpenAIAgentsProvider(),
});

async function main() {
  // Create Tool Router session
  const session = await composio.create(userId as string, {
    toolkits: ['emailoctopus'],
  });
  const mcpUrl = session.mcp.url;

  // Configure agent with MCP tool
  const agent = new Agent({
    name: 'Assistant',
    model: 'gpt-5',
    instructions:
      'You are a helpful assistant that can access Emailoctopus. Help users perform Emailoctopus operations through natural language.',
    tools: [
      hostedMcpTool({
        serverLabel: 'tool_router',
        serverUrl: mcpUrl,
        headers: { 'x-api-key': composioApiKey },
        requireApproval: 'never',
      }),
    ],
  });

  // Keep conversation state across turns
  const conversationSession = new OpenAIConversationsSession();

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

  console.log('\nComposio Tool Router session created.');
  console.log('\nChat started. Type your requests below.');
  console.log("Commands: 'exit', 'quit', or 'q' to end\n");

  try {
    const first = await run(agent, 'What can you help me with?', { session: conversationSession });
    console.log(`Assistant: ${first.finalOutput}\n`);
  } catch (e) {
    console.error('Error:', e instanceof Error ? e.message : e, '\n');
  }

  rl.prompt();

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

    if (['exit', 'quit', 'q'].includes(text.toLowerCase())) {
      console.log('Goodbye!');
      rl.close();
      process.exit(0);
    }

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

    try {
      const result = await run(agent, text, { session: conversationSession });
      console.log(`\nAssistant: ${result.finalOutput}\n`);
    } catch (e) {
      console.error('Error:', e instanceof Error ? e.message : e, '\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

This was a starter code for integrating Emailoctopus MCP with OpenAI Agents SDK to build a functional AI agent that can interact with Emailoctopus.

Key features:

  • Hosted MCP tool integration through Composio's Tool Router
  • SQLite session persistence for conversation history
  • Simple async chat loop for interactive testing
You can extend this by adding more toolkits, implementing custom business logic, or building a web interface around the agent.
TOOLS

Supported Tools

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

Create Contact

This tool creates a new contact in EmailOctopus.

Create Field

Tool to create a new custom field on an EmailOctopus mailing list.

Create List

Creates a new mailing list in EmailOctopus for organizing and managing email contacts.

Create Tag

Tool to create a new tag on an EmailOctopus mailing list.

Delete Contact

Permanently deletes a contact from a specified EmailOctopus list.

Delete Field

Permanently deletes a custom field from a specified EmailOctopus list.

Delete List

This tool allows you to delete an existing mailing list from your EmailOctopus account.

Delete Tag

Tool to delete a tag from a mailing list in EmailOctopus.

Get All Lists

This tool retrieves all the mailing lists associated with the EmailOctopus account.

Get Contact

Tool to retrieve details of a specific contact from an EmailOctopus list.

Get List

Retrieves details of a specific mailing list by ID.

Get Recent Campaigns

This tool retrieves a list of recent campaigns from the EmailOctopus account.

List Contacts

Tool to retrieve contacts from an EmailOctopus list.

List Tags

Tool to retrieve all tags from a mailing list.

Unsubscribe Contact

Unsubscribes a contact from an EmailOctopus mailing list.

Batch Update Contacts

Tool to update multiple contacts in an EmailOctopus list in a single batch operation.

Update Field

Updates an existing custom field on an EmailOctopus list including its label, tag, type, and fallback value.

Update List

Tool to update an existing mailing list's name in EmailOctopus.

Update Tag

Tool to update an existing tag on a mailing list.

Create or Update Contact

Tool to create or update a contact in EmailOctopus.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

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

Yes, you can. OpenAI Agents SDK 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 Emailoctopus tools.

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

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