Substack MCP for Claude and AI agents
Substack has no official publishing API, and no official MCP server. This page explains what the community Substack MCP servers do and how they sign in as you, and where Liftli fits: the strategist and drafting side of Substack inside Claude or ChatGPT. You publish on Substack yourself.
The short version
Substack's own API terms cover public profile and publication data, not posting. The popular community Substack MCP servers post by using your logged-in Substack session cookie. Liftli does not touch your Substack account: inside Claude or ChatGPT it plans your newsletter, drafts issues and Notes in your voice, and critiques them. You paste and press publish.
What a Substack MCP server does
MCP (Model Context Protocol) is how an AI assistant such as Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor plugs into another service. A Substack MCP server gives the assistant tools for Substack: in the community servers, that means creating drafts, publishing posts and Notes, or reading your stats. So when people search for "Claude Substack" or "Substack AI", they usually want one of two things: an assistant that can write for their newsletter, or one that can post to it. Those are different tools.
Does Substack have an API?
Substack publishes Developer API terms (last updated 8 January 2026). They describe access to public creator and publication data, such as names, subscriber counts, bestseller status and profile URLs, for display, discovery and analytics. They say nothing about creating, publishing or scheduling posts or Notes.
That is why every community server below that writes to Substack does it the same way: it reuses the session your browser gets when you sign in to Substack. Substack's terms of use also bar scraping and processes that run while you are not logged in, which matters if you plan to schedule anything unattended.
Community Substack MCP servers, compared
These are the most-starred Substack MCP servers on GitHub. Each one states its sign-in method openly in its README. Star counts are rounded, as of 14 October 2026.
| Repository | Stars | What it does | How it signs in | License |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| alxgntv/substack-api-mcp | 130 | Creates drafts, publishes now or schedules posts, manages tags, creates and deletes Notes, and runs an AI-text check on a draft. | Your substack.sid cookie, plus an API key from its own service, apisubstack.com. | Source available: free for non-commercial use; commercial use needs visible attribution or a paid license. |
| marcomoauro/substack-mcp | 80 | 27 tools: create, edit and publish drafts, subscribers and analytics, reader feeds, tags, comments, restacks and image uploads. | Your Substack session token, copied from the browser's developer tools. | MIT |
| conorbronsdon/substack-mcp | 40 | Rich drafts, archive search, Notes, analytics and consented subscriber management. Long-form posts stay drafts you publish in Substack; Notes publish immediately. | A browser login that stores your session, or a pasted cookie. | MIT |
All three are self-hosted: you install and run them on your own machine. Before you connect one, weigh three things. The session cookie works like your password, so keep it local. The endpoints are undocumented, so a Substack site change or an expired cookie can break them. And you stay responsible for what gets posted. If you want posting from chat, these are the route; conorbronsdon/substack-mcp keeps long-form posts as drafts, which is the most cautious of the three.
Where Liftli fits: the strategist, not the poster
Liftli is a remote MCP server for the part that comes before publishing: deciding what to say, and writing it well. It connects to Claude, ChatGPT and other MCP clients with one URL, and needs no Substack login.
- A strategy for your Substack. Liftli builds and remembers a Substack plan separately from your LinkedIn and X plans: what the publication promises, its pillars, its cadence.
- Issues and Notes in your voice. It drafts from your real material (voice notes, calls, what you shipped this week), in the voice it learned from your own writing.
- A critique before you publish. Every draft is checked against a quality bar: one idea, a title and subtitle that don't repeat, one call to action, no filler.
- One idea, three surfaces. The same thinking becomes a LinkedIn post, an X post and a Substack issue, each written for its own surface.
- You publish. Paste the draft into Substack and press publish. Set a send time and Liftli reminds you. On LinkedIn and X, which have official APIs, Liftli can publish and schedule for you after you approve.
| Liftli | Community Substack MCP | |
|---|---|---|
| Main job | Plan, draft and critique your issues and Notes | Create, publish or schedule on Substack, read stats |
| Your Substack login | Not needed; it never touches your account | Needed: your session cookie |
| Setup | Paste one URL | Install and run it on your machine |
| Writes in your voice | Yes, learned from your own writing | No; the assistant writes as it normally does |
| Remembers your strategy | Yes, between sessions and across clients | No |
| Publishes to Substack | No: you paste and publish | Yes: posts, and Notes in two of the three |
More on how Liftli works on Substack: Liftli for Substack.
Connect Liftli in a minute
One remote MCP URL works in every client. There is nothing to install or run locally:
https://mcp.liftli.ai/mcp| Client | How to add it |
|---|---|
| Claude (web, desktop, mobile) | Customize (briefcase icon) → Connectors → Add custom connector → paste https://mcp.liftli.ai/mcp |
| Claude Code | claude mcp add --scope user --transport http liftli https://mcp.liftli.ai/mcp |
| ChatGPT (custom app) | On a computer: Plugins → Add → Create MCP App (or + → Create app) → add the same URL. If there is no create option or ChatGPT asks for Developer mode, turn it on under Settings → Security and login |
| Codex and Cursor (Cursor in beta) | Add a remote MCP server pointing at the same URL |
| Grok (grok.com) | grok.com/connectors → New Connector → Custom → the same URL |
Then say "build my Substack strategy" or "draft this week's issue from my notes". Full setup for every client is on the developers page.
Prefer free skills? Start there
If you work in Claude Code, Codex or Cursor, the free, MIT-licensed Substack agent skills teach your agent the craft without any connector: Notes, issue outlines, titles and subject lines, a growth audit, and LinkedIn to Substack.
npx skills add liftli-ai/substack-agent-skillsPricing
Start free with no credit card, and try Liftli on Substack. Substack is part of the Business plan at $79 a month, which covers LinkedIn, X and Substack under one strategist. Liftli adds no AI markup, because it runs inside the AI subscription you already pay for. See all plans.