Can Claude / ChatGPT / Cursor use Contact Book directly?

Yes, via the MCP server. It's a stdio JSON-RPC server that wires into Claude Desktop, Cursor, or any MCP-aware client in five lines of config. The list of tools matches your data model 1:1 - whatever a CRUD type exposes in the UI is exposed identically to the agent.

Do agent calls share the same auth + access controls?

Yes. The MCP server authenticates with the same JWT or PAT a human session uses. Sharing rules, org membership, rate limits, suspicion bans - all of it applies. There's no "agent backdoor" that bypasses the access matrix.

Is there an audit trail for agent actions?

Yes. Every mutation goes through the same audit-log path as a UI click. The transport (UI / API / CLI / MCP) is recorded as channel metadata so you can filter "what did the agent do this hour" from your account history.

Can I rate-limit an agent separately from a human?

Per-token rate limits apply, so you can issue an agent its own PAT and cap it independently. The shared user-level bucket also caps total throughput, so a runaway loop can't drain your whole account. The CLI's auto-update channel marker means you can also see in audit which version is calling.

Does the MCP / API surface cost extra?

No. Same plan, same surface. We don't paywall the agent - it's the same product, the same schema, the same access gates. If a plan can do X in the UI, it can do X via MCP.

Contact Book

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Contact Book: the agent-friendly alternative to Hippo

Same product, same surface for humans and AI agents. MCP server + CLI + drop-in clients in 15 languages.

Agentic alternative

Personal CRM

Networking

Julia YukovichCo-Founder + CEO

·April 28, 2026·

1 min read

Contact Book ships an MCP server you can wire into Claude Desktop or any MCP client in five lines. The same auth + access gates apply, the same audit log records every action, the same rate limits apply. Hippo doesn't currently expose this surface - that's the gap.

At a glance

Hippo's design philosophy is the opposite of feature-creep: do the keep-in-touch reminder loop perfectly and stop. Contact Book does the same loop alongside life events, gifts, family graph, and a journal. Pick Hippo if you want the simplest possible nudge tool; pick us if you want the texture too.

Agent surface

What 'agent-friendly' actually means in practice

Contact Book ships an MCP server, a CLI, and drop-in clients in 15 languages. They're auto-generated from the same schema your UI uses; the auth, the access gates, the rate limits, the audit log all apply identically whether you're clicking buttons or calling the API. Hippo doesn't currently expose this surface, which is the gap a serious agent integration trips over - the agent ends up scraping the UI through a browser, which is fragile, slow, and silently bypasses everything below.