BarterBanner MCP server

Ask your AI assistant about the BarterBanner traffic exchange network — and, with a personal key, about your own sites and campaigns — in plain words.

Endpoint

https://barterbanner.com/mcp

Transport

Streamable HTTP, stateless, JSON responses

Without a key

4 public, read-only tools

With a key

plus 5 tools about your own sites and campaigns; a key with permission can also create, edit, pause and resume campaigns

Key header

Authorization: Bearer bb_…

What BarterBanner is

Member websites show each other's recommendation cards. Showing a card earns credits; having your card shown elsewhere spends them. Credits are not money and cannot be bought or withdrawn. A view counts only when a reader actually sees the card — at least half of it on screen for one continuous second, the MRC standard. The exact rules are returned by the get_exchange_rules tool, built from the same numbers the network computes with.

Public tools — no key

The same information the home page shows. No balances, no earnings, nothing private.

Your own data — with a key

1. Sign in to the dashboard and open Tools → AI assistant.
2. Create a key and name it after the assistant it is for. Tick Allow creating campaigns only if you want the assistant to add campaigns.
3. Copy the key — it is shown once. Put it into your assistant's settings as the header Authorization: Bearer bb_…. Do not send it to anyone.

A key reaches only its owner's sites: asking about someone else's domain returns “not one of your sites”. If you have a single site, the domain can be left out.

Creating and changing campaigns

create_campaign makes a native card campaign. It is not shown until the network's automatic review approves it — usually within minutes; list_my_campaigns shows the verdict. Before saving, the server checks:

• the link leads to the same site (subdomains allowed), opens, and does not redirect to another domain;
• the image address returns a picture;
• the site is verified and not suspended;
• the title is at most 100 characters, the description at most 200;
• no more than 10 campaigns a day are created this way. Campaigns made in the dashboard are not counted.

update_campaign changes the title, description, link, image or language — only what is passed — with the same checks. A changed campaign leaves the network until the review approves it again; at most 20 edits a day.

pause_campaign stops a campaign. resume_campaign returns it to the network only if the review approved it: an unreviewed campaign goes to review first, a rejected one stays paused until it is edited.

Every refusal says what is wrong, so the assistant can fix it. Campaigns created by an assistant are marked in the dashboard, and every action an assistant takes is logged.

About after-click data

What readers do after the click is measured by the BarterBanner widget script on the page they land on. If a landing page has no widget code, arrivals there are not recorded — install the code (get_widget_code) before concluding that readers do not reach the page. Judge a campaign after a few hundred views and at least a few clicks; small numbers say little.

Connecting

Any MCP client that speaks Streamable HTTP works. Clients that accept only a URL get the public tools; your own data needs a client that can send a header.

Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http barterbanner https://barterbanner.com/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer bb_YOUR_KEY"

Cursor — ~/.cursor/mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "barterbanner": {
      "url": "https://barterbanner.com/mcp",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer bb_YOUR_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

VS Code — .vscode/mcp.json

{
  "servers": {
    "barterbanner": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://barterbanner.com/mcp",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer bb_YOUR_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

For public tools only, leave out the header.

Try it with curl

curl -s https://barterbanner.com/mcp \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Accept: application/json, text/event-stream" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"get_network_stats","arguments":{}}}'

Keys and safety

• Only a hash of the key is stored; the key itself is shown once, when created.
• A key cannot sign in to the dashboard or create other keys.
• Up to 5 keys can be active. Revoke a key in the dashboard and it stops working at once.
• Resetting your password through recovery revokes all keys.
• A wrong or revoked key gets 401 — never a silent fallback to public data.

Limits and errors

Listed on glama.ai. Questions — through the support contact in the dashboard.