Nanobot - Build MCP Agents

Nanobot enables building agents with MCP and MCP-UI by providing a flexible MCP host. While existing applications like VSCode, Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, and Goose all include an MCP host, Nanobot is designed to be a standalone, open-source MCP host that can be easily deployed or integrated into your applications. You can use Nanobot to create your own dedicated MCP and MCP-UI powered chatbot.

What is an MCP Host?

An MCP host is the service that combines MCP servers with an LLM and context to present an agent experience to a consumer. The primary experience today is a chat interface, but it can be many other interfaces such as voice, SMS, e-mail, AR/VR, Slack, MCP, or any other interface that can be used to interact with an agent.

Examples

Here are some examples of Nanobots in action:

• Blackjack Game (config) (mcp source)
• Hugging Face MCP (config)
• Shopping/Shopify (config)

Installation

Nanobot can be installed via Homebrew:

brew install nanobot-ai/tap/nanobot

This will give you the nanobot CLI, which you can use to run and manage your MCP host.

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Getting Started

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Configuration

Nanobot supports the following providers:

• OpenAI (e.g. gpt-4)
• Anthropic (e.g. claude-3)

To use them, set the corresponding API key:

# For OpenAI models
export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...

# For Anthropic models
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...

Nanobot automatically selects the correct provider based on the model specified.

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Create a configuration file (e.g. nanobot.yaml) that defines your agents and MCP servers.

Example:

agents:
  dealer:
    name: Blackjack Dealer
    model: gpt-4.1
    mcpServers: blackjackmcp

mcpServers:
  blackjackmcp:
    url: https://blackjack.nanobot.ai/mcp

Start Nanobot with:

nanobot run ./nanobot.yaml

The UI will be available at http://localhost:8080.

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Development & Contribution

Contributions are welcome! Nanobot is still in alpha, so expect active development and rapid changes.

Build from Source

make

Working on the UI

The Nanobot UI lives in the ./ui directory. To develop against it:

1. Remove the old build artifacts:

   rm -rf ./ui/dist

2. Rebuild the Nanobot binary:

   make

3. Start the UI in development mode:

   cd ui
   npm run dev

4. The UI must be served from port 5173.
   Nanobot runs on port 8080 and will forward UI requests to :5173.

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Features & Roadmap

Nanobot aims to be a fully compliant MCP Host and support all MCP + MCP-UI features.

Feature Category	Feature	Status
MCP Core	TODO	✅ Implemented
	TODO	🚧 Partial
	TODO	❌ Not yet
	TODO	✅ Implemented
MCP-UI	TODO	🚧 Partial
	TODO	✅ Implemented
	TODO	❌ Not yet

✅ = Implemented 🚧 = Partial / WIP ❌ = Not yet ⏳ = Planned

Roadmap

• Full MCP + MCP-UI compliance
• More robust multi-agent support
• Production-ready UI
• Expanded model provider support
• Expanded authentication and security features
• Frontend integrations (Slack, SMS, email, embedded web agents)
• Easy embedding into existing apps and websites

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License

Nanobot is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License.

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Links

• Website: nanobot.ai
• GitHub: github.com/nanobot-ai/nanobot