How to integrate Cats MCP with OpenAI Agents SDK

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Introduction

This guide walks you through connecting Cats to the OpenAI Agents SDK using the Composio tool router. By the end, you'll have a working Cats agent that can show me five random cat images, list popular cat breeds with photos, find unique cat facts for trivia through natural language commands.

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

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

Also integrate Cats with

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 Cats
  • Configure an AI agent that can use Cats as a tool
  • Run a live chat session where you can ask the agent to perform Cats operations

What is OpenAI 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 Cats MCP server, and what's possible with it?

The Cats MCP server is an implementation of the Model Context Protocol that connects your AI agent and assistants like Claude, Cursor, etc directly to your Cats account. It provides structured and secure access to a wide collection of cat images, breed information, and fun feline facts, so your agent can fetch cat data, browse curated cat images, and pull breed details on your behalf.

  • Portals listing for cat resources: Instruct your agent to list and browse all available cat-related portals, making it easy to explore organized collections of cat images and data.
  • Metadata exploration with pagination: Have your agent efficiently page through vast cat collections, ensuring you can access just the right portal or dataset without missing a thing.
  • On-demand cat image discovery: Let your agent find and retrieve high-quality cat images from the API’s large, curated library—perfect for enrichment or just a dose of cuteness.
  • Access to detailed breed and fact data: Ask your agent to pull up detailed info on cat breeds and fun facts, making it a handy assistant for both research and entertainment.

Supported Tools & Triggers

Tools
Create FavouriteTool to save an image as a favourite to your account.
Create VoteTool to vote on a cat image.
Delete FavouriteTool to delete a favourite from your account by its ID.
Delete ImageDelete an uploaded image from your account by its ID.
Delete VoteTool to delete a vote from your account by its ID.
Get Cat Breed by IDTool to get detailed information about a specific cat breed by its ID.
Get Favourite by IDTool to retrieve a specific favourite by its unique ID.
Get Cat Image by IDTool to retrieve a specific cat image by its unique ID.
Get Image AnalysisGet machine learning analysis results for an uploaded image.
Get Image BreedsTool to retrieve breed information associated with a specific cat image.
Get Cat BreedsRetrieves a paginated list of cat breeds from The Cat API.
Get Vote by IDRetrieves a specific vote by its unique ID from The Cat API.
List Image CategoriesRetrieves a list of all active image categories from The Cat API.
List FavouritesTool to get all favourites belonging to your account.
List Uploaded ImagesTool to get all images uploaded to your account via /images/upload.
List VotesTool to retrieve all votes you have created.
Search Cat BreedsSearch for cat breeds by name.
Search Cat ImagesSearch for random cat images with optional filters.

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

What is Composio SDK?

Composio's Composio SDK 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 Composio SDK

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

How the Composio SDK works

The Composio SDK 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 Cats 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 Cats.

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 Cats Tool Router session
session = composio.create(
    user_id=user_id,
    toolkits=["cats"]
)

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 cats.
  • The router checks the user's Cats connection and prepares the MCP endpoint.
  • The returned session.mcp.url is the MCP URL that your agent will use to access Cats.
  • This approach keeps things lightweight and lets the agent request Cats 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 Cats. "
        "Help users perform Cats 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 Cats 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 Cats 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 Cats.
  • 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 Cats and OpenAI 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=["cats"]
)
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 Cats. "
        "Help users perform Cats 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 Cats MCP with OpenAI Agents SDK to build a functional AI agent that can interact with Cats.

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 Cats MCP Agent with another framework

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Claude Agent SDK

Use Cats MCP with Claude Agent SDK

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Claude Code

Use Cats MCP with Claude Code

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Claude Cowork

Use Cats MCP with Claude Cowork

Codex logo

Codex

Use Cats MCP with Codex

OpenClaw logo

OpenClaw

Use Cats MCP with OpenClaw

Hermes logo

Hermes

Use Cats MCP with Hermes

CLI logo

CLI

Use Cats MCP with CLI

Google ADK logo

Google ADK

Use Cats MCP with Google ADK

LangChain logo

LangChain

Use Cats MCP with LangChain

Vercel AI SDK logo

Vercel AI SDK

Use Cats MCP with Vercel AI SDK

Mastra AI logo

Mastra AI

Use Cats MCP with Mastra AI

LlamaIndex logo

LlamaIndex

Use Cats MCP with LlamaIndex

CrewAI logo

CrewAI

Use Cats MCP with CrewAI

FAQ

What are the differences in Tool Router MCP and Cats MCP?

With a standalone Cats MCP server, the agents and LLMs can only access a fixed set of Cats tools tied to that server. However, with the Composio Tool Router, agents can dynamically load tools from Cats 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 Cats tools.

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

Yes, absolutely. You can configure which Cats 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 Cats data and credentials are handled as safely as possible.

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