APISelf

Local desktop apps served as MCP tools from one endpoint on your own machine

Documentation

APISelf MCP

Local desktop applications, served to your AI agent as MCP tools from a single endpoint on your own machine.

Most MCP servers wrap a cloud API. These wrap applications that do things on the machine itself: Whisper transcription, screen recording, image and video generation, document conversion, peer-to-peer file transfer, notifications.

Try it without installing anything

There is a hosted, read-only server that lets an agent browse the catalogue before you install a thing. Four tools, no account, no local setup:

claude mcp add --transport http apiself-catalogue https://apiself.com/mcp

Tool	What it does
`list_boxes`	Every box with tagline, category and maturity
`get_box`	One box in full: what it does, price per tier, requirements
`search_boxes`	Find boxes by what they do, e.g. "transcribe speech", "QR codes"
`get_install_command`	The exact install command for a given platform

That is the shop window. The rest of this page is the thing itself.

The local endpoint

Install the APISelf Manager, install the boxes you want, and every one of them appears as MCP tools on:

http://127.0.0.1:7474/api/mcp

Install another box and its tools show up there with no configuration. Remove it and they disappear. There is no per-box MCP code to write or keep in sync.

Installing the Manager

# Linux
curl -fsSL https://apiself.com/install/en/setup.sh | bash

# macOS
curl -fsSL https://apiself.com/install/en/setup-macos.sh | bash

# Windows (PowerShell)
irm https://apiself.com/install/en/install-windows.ps1 | iex

The Manager runs on localhost:7474. Settings → AI integration prints the ready-made configuration for each client below, with the session token filled in.

Connecting a client

Claude Code — one command, no config file:

claude mcp add --transport http apiself http://127.0.0.1:7474/api/mcp \
  --header "X-APISelf-Token: <MANAGER_SESSION_TOKEN>"

Cursor — mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apiself": {
      "url": "http://127.0.0.1:7474/api/mcp",
      "headers": { "X-APISelf-Token": "<MANAGER_SESSION_TOKEN>" }
    }
  }
}

Claude Desktop — via mcp-remote:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apiself": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y", "mcp-remote", "http://127.0.0.1:7474/api/mcp",
        "--header", "X-APISelf-Token: <MANAGER_SESSION_TOKEN>"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT are also generated for you in the same place.

What you get

Each installed box contributes its own tools, so the total depends on what you installed - a full catalogue is several hundred operations. The snapshot below counts domain endpoints only, with health, info and audit excluded.

The catalogue changes as boxes ship, so treat this as a picture rather than a contract. The live list is at https://apiself.com/llms.txt, and the list_boxes tool on the hosted server above returns it directly.

Box	Tools	What it is
AI Gateway	46	One place for AI models and keys, local and cloud
Auth	37	Self-hosted SSO and accounts for every box
Notify	35	Multi-channel notifications: email, Slack, Telegram, bring your own key
Video Tools	35	Convert, resize, trim and optimise video locally
Image Gen	34	Images from a prompt, on your GPU or via your own cloud key
Image Tools	34	Convert, resize and optimise images locally
S3 Bridge	29	A local S3 API in front of any storage backend
Text to Speech	28	Local voice synthesis, no per-character fees
Video Gen	28	AI video from a prompt via your own cloud key
Storage	25	Storage gateway: S3, SFTP, Dropbox, WebDAV
Recorder	23	Screen and microphone recording
AI Chat	18	Chat with local and cloud models over your own documents (RAG)
Forms	17	Self-hosted form builder
Scan Codes	17	QR and barcode scanning and generation, offline batch
Reel Forge	16	Prompt to finished short video: script, voice, captions
Doc Tools	14	Document conversion and PDF editing
Transcribe	14	Local Whisper transcription, fully offline
File Drop	11	Peer-to-peer file sharing, no upload to any server

The tool-count problem

Several hundred tools drowns an agent. Context fills with definitions the task will never use, and selection accuracy drops long before the context window does.

Above a threshold the server stops returning the full catalogue from tools/list and returns three meta-tools instead:

Tool	What it does
`search_tools`	Find tools by what you want to do
`call_tool`	Invoke one by name
`list_boxes`	What is installed and what each box is for

The agent searches for what a task needs and pulls in only that. The Manager's own tools stay directly available in both modes, because a request like "install the QR code box" should not require a search step first.

The threshold is 50 by default and is configurable:

APISELF_MCP_TOOL_SEARCH_THRESHOLD=120   # raise it
APISELF_MCP_TOOL_SEARCH_THRESHOLD=0     # always return the full list
APISELF_MCP_TOOL_SEARCH_THRESHOLD=-1    # always search

How the tools are generated

Every box ships an OpenAPI document describing its REST API. The Manager reads those documents at startup and derives the MCP tool definitions from them, so:

adding an endpoint to a box adds a tool, with no MCP code anywhere
tool descriptions come from the API descriptions and stay in sync by construction
tool names are namespaced by box, e.g. transcribe__post_api_transcribe
descriptions are served in the Manager's language, not only English

Boxes also call each other over the same REST APIs, so an agent asking one box to hand work to another is using a path that already exists rather than one built for agents.

Where things run

Everything is on 127.0.0.1 on a desktop install: no LAN listener, nothing for nmap to find. Installed over SSH on a Linux machine with no display, the Manager detects that, binds 0.0.0.0 and enables LAN access so you can reach it from another computer. Either default can be changed during first run or later in settings.

Boxes with AI features ship a local model as the default. Cloud models are bring-your-own-key: the key goes into the AI Gateway box, the only place one is stored, and other boxes route through it without ever seeing it.

Things worth knowing before you install

It is closed source. It is a paid product from one person and there is no version of opening it that survives that. What is true instead: your data sits on your own disk as plain SQLite and ordinary files, and every box's HTTP interface is documented, so nothing is trapped if APISelf disappears.

The apps are paid, with a free tier that does not expire. When a trial ends the box degrades to Free rather than stopping, and nothing you created is lost. The Manager itself is free.

The binaries are not code-signed yet. Windows shows a SmartScreen warning and macOS Gatekeeper asks for confirmation on first launch. It is a cost not yet covered and the first thing that gets paid for.

There is no sandbox. A box runs as a normal process under your user account, the same as any desktop application you install.