How to integrate Active campaign MCP with OpenAI Agents SDK

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Introduction

This guide walks you through connecting Active campaign to the OpenAI Agents SDK using the Composio tool router. By the end, you'll have a working Active campaign agent that can add a note to john doe's contact record, create a new contact with email and tags, add contact jane@company.com to 'welcome series' automation, create a follow-up task for a lead due friday through natural language commands.

This guide will help you understand how to give your OpenAI Agents SDK agent real control over a Active campaign account through Composio's Active campaign MCP server.

Before we dive in, let's take a quick look at the key ideas and tools involved.

TL;DR

Here's what you'll learn:
  • Get and set up your OpenAI and Composio API keys
  • Install the necessary dependencies
  • Initialize Composio and create a Tool Router session for Active campaign
  • Configure an AI agent that can use Active campaign as a tool
  • Run a live chat session where you can ask the agent to perform Active campaign operations

What is open-ai-agents-sdk?

The OpenAI Agents SDK is a lightweight framework for building AI agents that can use tools and maintain conversation state. It provides a simple interface for creating agents with hosted MCP tool support.

Key features include:

  • Hosted MCP Tools: Connect to external services through hosted MCP endpoints
  • SQLite Sessions: Persist conversation history across interactions
  • Simple API: Clean interface with Agent, Runner, and tool configuration
  • Streaming Support: Real-time response streaming for interactive applications

What is the Active campaign MCP server, and what's possible with it?

The ActiveCampaign MCP server is an implementation of the Model Context Protocol that connects your AI agent and assistants like Claude, Cursor, etc directly to your ActiveCampaign account. It provides structured and secure access to your marketing automation and CRM data, so your agent can perform actions like adding contacts, managing deals, creating tasks, and organizing pipelines on your behalf.

  • Automated contact management: Easily add new contacts, update details, or attach notes so your customer database stays current and actionable.
  • Sales pipeline creation and management: Let your agent create, customize, or delete deal pipelines and organize deals through every stage of your sales process.
  • Task and activity automation: Have your agent create tasks for contacts and deals, assign due dates, and ensure important follow-ups never slip through the cracks.
  • Deal and account organization: Automatically create, update, or remove accounts and associate them with the right contacts and opportunities for seamless CRM workflows.
  • Seamless automation enrollment: Add contacts directly to specific automations, personalizing your marketing or sales outreach at scale without manual effort.

Supported Tools & Triggers

Tools
Add contact noteAdd a note to a contact in activecampaign.
Add Contact to AutomationThis tool adds an existing contact to a specific automation in activecampaign.
Add Secondary Contact to DealThis tool adds a secondary contact to an existing deal in activecampaign.
Create AccountThis tool creates a new account in activecampaign.
Create contactCreates a new contact in activecampaign with the specified details.
Create contact taskCreate a task associated with a contact in activecampaign.
Create Deal PipelineCreates a new deal pipeline in activecampaign.
Create Deal Task TypeThis tool creates a new deal task type in activecampaign.
Delete AccountThis tool deletes an existing account in activecampaign.
Delete Deal PipelineThis tool deletes an existing deal pipeline in activecampaign.
Delete Deal StageThis tool deletes an existing deal stage in activecampaign.
Find contactFind a specific contact in activecampaign using either their email address, id, or phone number.
Find Contact TasksThis tool allows you to find tasks associated with a specific contact in activecampaign.
Find User by EmailThis tool allows you to find a user in activecampaign by their email address, returning detailed information including first name, last name, email, phone, organization details, and related resource links.
List all contactsList all contacts in activecampaign.
Manage contact tagManage tags for a contact in activecampaign.
Manage list subscriptionSubscribe or unsubscribe a contact from a list in activecampaign.
Remove Contact from AutomationThis tool removes a contact from a specified automation in activecampaign.
Track Event in ActiveCampaignThis tool creates a custom website or application event in activecampaign by recording events through a post api endpoint.
Update AccountThis tool updates an existing account in activecampaign.
Upsert AccountThis tool creates a new account if it doesn't exist or updates an existing account in activecampaign.

What is the Composio tool router, and how does it fit here?

What is Tool Router?

Composio's Tool Router helps agents find the right tools for a task at runtime. You can plug in multiple toolkits (like Gmail, HubSpot, and GitHub), and the agent will identify the relevant app and action to complete multi-step workflows. This can reduce token usage and improve the reliability of tool calls. Read more here: Getting started with Tool Router

The tool router generates a secure MCP URL that your agents can access to perform actions.

How the Tool Router works

The Tool Router follows a three-phase workflow:

  1. Discovery: Searches for tools matching your task and returns relevant toolkits with their details.
  2. Authentication: Checks for active connections. If missing, creates an auth config and returns a connection URL via Auth Link.
  3. Execution: Executes the action using the authenticated connection.

Step-by-step Guide

Prerequisites

Before starting, make sure you have:
  • Composio API Key and OpenAI API Key
  • Primary know-how of OpenAI Agents SDK
  • A live Active campaign project
  • Some knowledge of Python or Typescript

Getting API Keys for OpenAI and Composio

OpenAI API Key
  • Go to the OpenAI dashboard and create an API key. You'll need credits to use the models, or you can connect to another model provider.
  • Keep the API key safe.
Composio API Key

Install dependencies

pip install composio_openai_agents openai-agents python-dotenv

Install the Composio SDK and the OpenAI Agents SDK.

Set up environment variables

bash
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...your-api-key
COMPOSIO_API_KEY=your-api-key
USER_ID=composio_user@gmail.com

Create a .env file and add your OpenAI and Composio API keys.

Import dependencies

import asyncio
import os
from dotenv import load_dotenv

from composio import Composio
from composio_openai_agents import OpenAIAgentsProvider
from agents import Agent, Runner, HostedMCPTool, SQLiteSession
What's happening:
  • You're importing all necessary libraries.
  • The Composio and OpenAIAgentsProvider classes are imported to connect your OpenAI agent to Composio tools like Active campaign.

Set up the Composio instance

load_dotenv()

api_key = os.getenv("COMPOSIO_API_KEY")
user_id = os.getenv("USER_ID")

if not api_key:
    raise RuntimeError("COMPOSIO_API_KEY is not set. Create a .env file with COMPOSIO_API_KEY=your_key")

# Initialize Composio
composio = Composio(api_key=api_key, provider=OpenAIAgentsProvider())
What's happening:
  • load_dotenv() loads your .env file so OPENAI_API_KEY and COMPOSIO_API_KEY are available as environment variables.
  • Creating a Composio instance using the API Key and OpenAIAgentsProvider class.

Create a Tool Router session

# Create a Active campaign Tool Router session
session = composio.create(
    user_id=user_id,
    toolkits=["active_campaign"]
)

mcp_url = session.mcp.url

What is happening:

  • You give the Tool Router the user id and the toolkits you want available. Here, it is only active_campaign.
  • The router checks the user's Active campaign connection and prepares the MCP endpoint.
  • The returned session.mcp.url is the MCP URL that your agent will use to access Active campaign.
  • This approach keeps things lightweight and lets the agent request Active campaign tools only when needed during the conversation.

Configure the agent

# Configure agent with MCP tool
agent = Agent(
    name="Assistant",
    model="gpt-5",
    instructions=(
        "You are a helpful assistant that can access Active campaign. "
        "Help users perform Active campaign operations through natural language."
    ),
    tools=[
        HostedMCPTool(
            tool_config={
                "type": "mcp",
                "server_label": "tool_router",
                "server_url": mcp_url,
                "headers": {"x-api-key": api_key},
                "require_approval": "never",
            }
        )
    ],
)
What's happening:
  • We're creating an Agent instance with a name, model (gpt-5), and clear instructions about its purpose.
  • The agent's instructions tell it that it can access Active campaign and help with queries, inserts, updates, authentication, and fetching database information.
  • The tools array includes a HostedMCPTool that connects to the MCP server URL we created earlier.
  • The headers dict includes the Composio API key for secure authentication with the MCP server.
  • require_approval: 'never' means the agent can execute Active campaign operations without asking for permission each time, making interactions smoother.

Start chat loop and handle conversation

print("\nComposio Tool Router session created.")

chat_session = SQLiteSession("conversation_openai_toolrouter")

print("\nChat started. Type your requests below.")
print("Commands: 'exit', 'quit', or 'q' to end\n")

async def main():
    try:
        result = await Runner.run(
            agent,
            "What can you help me with?",
            session=chat_session
        )
        print(f"Assistant: {result.final_output}\n")
    except Exception as e:
        print(f"Error: {e}\n")

    while True:
        user_input = input("You: ").strip()
        if user_input.lower() in {"exit", "quit", "q"}:
            print("Goodbye!")
            break

        result = await Runner.run(
            agent,
            user_input,
            session=chat_session
        )
        print(f"Assistant: {result.final_output}\n")

asyncio.run(main())
What's happening:
  • The program prints a session URL that you visit to authorize Active campaign.
  • After authorization, the chat begins.
  • Each message you type is processed by the agent using Runner.run().
  • The responses are printed to the console, and conversations are saved locally using SQLite.
  • Typing exit, quit, or q cleanly ends the chat.

Complete Code

Here's the complete code to get you started with Active campaign and open-ai-agents-sdk:

import asyncio
import os
from dotenv import load_dotenv

from composio import Composio
from composio_openai_agents import OpenAIAgentsProvider
from agents import Agent, Runner, HostedMCPTool, SQLiteSession

load_dotenv()

api_key = os.getenv("COMPOSIO_API_KEY")
user_id = os.getenv("USER_ID")

if not api_key:
    raise RuntimeError("COMPOSIO_API_KEY is not set. Create a .env file with COMPOSIO_API_KEY=your_key")

# Initialize Composio
composio = Composio(api_key=api_key, provider=OpenAIAgentsProvider())

# Create Tool Router session
session = composio.create(
    user_id=user_id,
    toolkits=["active_campaign"]
)
mcp_url = session.mcp.url

# Configure agent with MCP tool
agent = Agent(
    name="Assistant",
    model="gpt-5",
    instructions=(
        "You are a helpful assistant that can access Active campaign. "
        "Help users perform Active campaign operations through natural language."
    ),
    tools=[
        HostedMCPTool(
            tool_config={
                "type": "mcp",
                "server_label": "tool_router",
                "server_url": mcp_url,
                "headers": {"x-api-key": api_key},
                "require_approval": "never",
            }
        )
    ],
)

print("\nComposio Tool Router session created.")

chat_session = SQLiteSession("conversation_openai_toolrouter")

print("\nChat started. Type your requests below.")
print("Commands: 'exit', 'quit', or 'q' to end\n")

async def main():
    try:
        result = await Runner.run(
            agent,
            "What can you help me with?",
            session=chat_session
        )
        print(f"Assistant: {result.final_output}\n")
    except Exception as e:
        print(f"Error: {e}\n")

    while True:
        user_input = input("You: ").strip()
        if user_input.lower() in {"exit", "quit", "q"}:
            print("Goodbye!")
            break

        result = await Runner.run(
            agent,
            user_input,
            session=chat_session
        )
        print(f"Assistant: {result.final_output}\n")

asyncio.run(main())

Conclusion

This was a starter code for integrating Active campaign MCP with OpenAI Agents SDK to build a functional AI agent that can interact with Active campaign.

Key features:

  • Hosted MCP tool integration through Composio's Tool Router
  • SQLite session persistence for conversation history
  • Simple async chat loop for interactive testing
You can extend this by adding more toolkits, implementing custom business logic, or building a web interface around the agent.

How to build Active campaign MCP Agent with another framework

FAQ

What are the differences in Tool Router MCP and Active campaign MCP?

With a standalone Active campaign MCP server, the agents and LLMs can only access a fixed set of Active campaign tools tied to that server. However, with the Composio Tool Router, agents can dynamically load tools from Active campaign and many other apps based on the task at hand, all through a single MCP endpoint.

Can I use Tool Router MCP with OpenAI Agents SDK?

Yes, you can. OpenAI Agents SDK fully supports MCP integration. You get structured tool calling, message history handling, and model orchestration while Tool Router takes care of discovering and serving the right Active campaign tools.

Can I manage the permissions and scopes for Active campaign while using Tool Router?

Yes, absolutely. You can configure which Active campaign scopes and actions are allowed when connecting your account to Composio. You can also bring your own OAuth credentials or API configuration so you keep full control over what the agent can do.

How safe is my data with Composio Tool Router?

All sensitive data such as tokens, keys, and configuration is fully encrypted at rest and in transit. Composio is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant and follows strict security practices so your Active campaign data and credentials are handled as safely as possible.

Used by agents from

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Context
ASU
Letta
glean
HubSpot
Agent.ai
Altera
DataStax
Entelligence
Rolai
Context
ASU
Letta
glean
HubSpot
Agent.ai
Altera
DataStax
Entelligence
Rolai

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