# MCP server — Introduction


Source: https://vertexsms.com/en/mcp/introduction

The VertexSMS MCP server lets AI assistants like Claude, Cursor, and VS Code Copilot use your VertexSMS account directly — no glue code, no API plumbing. The assistant sees a set of tools and calls them on your behalf.

**Model Context Protocol (MCP)** is an open standard published by Anthropic for connecting AI applications to external systems. See the [protocol spec](https://modelcontextprotocol.io) if you want to understand how it works under the hood; you do not need to know it to use the server.

## Endpoint

```
https://mcp.vertexsms.com/mcp
```

The server speaks the MCP *Streamable HTTP* transport. Both standard bearer-token auth and full OAuth 2.1 are supported — see Authentication.

## Tools

Ten tools wrapping the VertexSMS REST API:

| Tool | Category | Description |
|------|----------|-------------|
| send_sms | SMS | Send an SMS message. |
| get_sms_rates | SMS | Look up per-country SMS pricing. |
| correct_phone_number | Numbers | Validate and convert phone numbers to E.164. |
| get_operator | Numbers | Look up a mobile operator by VertexSMS ID. |
| get_mcc_mnc_list | Numbers | List MCC/MNC codes for a country. |
| get_mobile_prefixes | Numbers | List mobile number prefixes for a country. |
| lookup_hlr | HLR | Run a synchronous HLR lookup on a phone number. |
| register_sender_id | Sender ID | Submit an alphanumeric Sender ID for approval. |
| register_msisdn_sender | Sender ID | Register a mobile number as a sender. |
| confirm_msisdn_sender | Sender ID | Confirm a mobile-number sender via the PIN sent by SMS. |

## Why use this instead of the REST API directly?

For traditional integrations (your application calls our API from server code), the REST API is the right tool. The MCP server is for the case where the caller is an AI assistant that does not have a hand-coded integration with VertexSMS — you want the assistant to *discover* what is possible and use it on demand.

Concrete examples: asking Claude Desktop to send a verification code to a phone number; letting Cursor validate a CSV of phone numbers as part of a code-generation task; using a custom internal AI agent to price-check campaigns before bulk sending.

## Get started

If you have a VertexSMS account, head to the Quickstart — you can be running tool calls from Claude Desktop in about 60 seconds. If you do not have an account, [contact us through the contact form](https://vertexsms.com/en/contact); registration is currently invite-only.