How to Connect the X (Twitter) Hosted MCP Server to Cursor, Claude, and Grok

What Launched

On June 30, 2026, the @XDevelopers account announced the hosted X MCP: a way to connect Grok, Cursor, or any MCP-compatible AI tool to the X API. In plain terms, it exposes X as a set of tools an AI agent can call directly, so your assistant can search posts, read timelines, and manage bookmarks without you writing a custom integration. The launch post cleared 3.72M views and more than 10,000 likes within a day, one of the largest single MCP moments to date.

There is a catch the announcement glosses over. "Without any setup" is only half true for the useful part, and the X API itself is no longer free. The rest of this guide is the practical version: what you get, exactly how to wire it up, and what it costs.

What It Is

X exposes two hosted Streamable-HTTP MCP servers, and it helps to keep them straight from the start. One is the API surface your agent acts through; the other is a documentation search server.

Both speak MCP over ordinary HTTP. One detail worth flagging for anyone tracking the protocol: the X MCP still advertises version 2025-06-18, well behind the stateless 2026-07-28 revision the maintainers locked in May 2026. If you want the bigger picture on where the standard is heading, our MCP 2026 spec breakdown covers the stateless core, Tasks, and MCP Apps.

Tool Categories

The press figure of more than 200 endpoints maps to six tool categories the model gets access to. Watch the Read or Write label on each row: it sets up the single most misreported detail about this server, which the next section untangles.

Read vs Write: The Nuance Everyone Gets Wrong

Here is the detail that tripped up the early write-ups. TechCrunch reported on June 30 that the server is not compatible with X's Write API endpoints, framing it as read-only to prevent autonomous posting and spam. The official docs reconcile that: the MCP deliberately omits tweet-posting and replies, the spam-sensitive Write endpoints, but it does allow user-context writes for bookmarks and Articles.

So the accurate framing is simple. Your agent can search the full archive, bookmark posts, and draft or publish Articles as you, but it cannot autonomously post tweets. If you were hoping to hand an agent the keys to your timeline, that specific door is closed by design, and it is closed on purpose.

Step-by-Step Setup

There are two routes. The simple route pastes your app's Bearer token as an Authorization header: no bridge, no browser, but read-only and no acting as you. It suits read-only clients that support remote MCP with custom headers. The full route uses the xurl bridge with an OAuth2 user context and is required for any write (bookmarks or Articles) or user-context tool. The config below uses the full route.

Why the bridge exists is the real friction point. X's OAuth requires your own developer app, and api.x.com/mcp does not advertise native MCP OAuth discovery or dynamic client registration. So instead of pointing your client straight at the URL, you run a tiny local bridge, xurl mcp, described by its maintainers as curl for the X API. The bridge owns the app identity, runs a one-time browser OAuth2 PKCE login, caches the token in ~/.xurl, and refreshes it automatically, including a forced refresh after a 401. It runs through npx with no separate install, keeps stdout a clean JSON-RPC channel, and routes all diagnostics to stderr.

Prerequisites for the full route:

1. Create an X app in the X Developer Portal with OAuth 2.0 enabled.
2. Register the redirect URI http://localhost:8080/callback (or set REDIRECT_URI and register that instead).
3. Copy your CLIENT_ID and CLIENT_SECRET.
4. Install Node.js so npx can run the bridge. A native install is optional: brew install --cask xdevplatform/tap/xurl or npm i -g @xdevplatform/xurl.

Cursor, Claude, and Grok Config

In Cursor, create ~/.cursor/mcp.json for a global server or .cursor/mcp.json for a single project. This canonical config is the one you will reuse everywhere: the identical shape drops into Claude Desktop's claude_desktop_config.json and VS Code's .vscode/mcp.json.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "xapi": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@xdevplatform/xurl", "mcp", "https://api.x.com/mcp"],
      "env": {
        "CLIENT_ID": "YOUR_X_APP_CLIENT_ID",
        "CLIENT_SECRET": "YOUR_X_APP_CLIENT_SECRET"
      }
    },
    "x-docs": { "url": "https://docs.x.com/mcp" }
  }
}

Then open Cursor, go to Settings and then MCP, and confirm the xapi entry shows a green dot. On first tool use the browser opens for login, and the tool list populates once the handshake completes.

Grok Build collapses the same wiring into a one-liner, then verifies it:

grok mcp add xapi npx -e CLIENT_ID=... -e CLIENT_SECRET=... \
  -- -y @xdevplatform/xurl mcp https://api.x.com/mcp

grok mcp doctor xapi
grok mcp list

For Claude Code or any other stdio client, use the same command (npx), the same args, and the same CLIENT_ID and CLIENT_SECRET environment variables. The one setting that trips people up: set startup_timeout_sec to 300 or higher so the first-run browser login has time to finish. On headless boxes, run xurl auth oauth2 --headless once and paste back the redirect, then start the client. For multiple accounts, add -u alice or --app my-app to the args. If you run Google Antigravity, the wiring is nearly identical, and our Antigravity MCP setup guide walks through the IDE-specific config.

Top Gotchas

Almost every failed first run traces back to one of these five items, straight from the docs troubleshooting table.

Once the X server is live, it joins the rest of your toolchain. For a job-by-job look at what else to wire in alongside it, see the best MCP servers for Claude Code.

The Pay-Per-Use Friction

The friction people actually hit is not the bridge, it is money. The X API is now pure pay-per-use with no meaningful free tier. Per the X API pricing docs and TechCrunch's coverage, posting standard content runs about $0.015, and posting a link runs about $0.20. New developers must add a payment method and load credits before any call goes through, which is why a fresh app can return client-not-enrolled until you switch it to Pay-per-use and Production.

That is the core of the loudest criticism. Some builders see the launch as a way to give agents real-time context that was previously locked away; others read it as a repackaged CLI whose real purpose is to meter API usage. Both readings can be true at once. Security-wise, treat ~/.xurl and any tokens as secrets, scope a dedicated app to only the permissions you need, and expect 429 rate-limit responses on writes, which count against stricter limits.

FAQ

Glossary

MCP (Model Context Protocol): An open standard that lets AI clients call external tools and data sources through a uniform JSON-RPC interface.

Streamable HTTP: The MCP transport both X servers use, carrying JSON-RPC over ordinary HTTP request and response streams.

xurl: X's official command-line tool, described as curl for the X API. Its mcp subcommand runs the local OAuth bridge.

OAuth 2.0 PKCE: The browser login flow the bridge uses to authorize as your account without shipping a long-lived secret.

Bearer token: An app-only credential for the simple read-only route, sent as an Authorization header with no user context.

stdio client: An MCP client that launches the server as a local process and talks to it over standard input and output.

WOEID: Where On Earth ID, the location code the News and Trends tools use to scope trends to a region.

Verdict

The X hosted MCP is genuinely useful if you want an agent that reads the live firehose, bookmarks what matters, and drafts Articles on your behalf. The setup is a one-time OAuth dance through the xurl bridge, not the zero-config experience the launch tweet implied, and the real cost is metered per call. Wire it in if real-time X context moves your product forward. Skip it if you expected free autonomous posting, because neither the free tier nor the tweet-posting exists. Configure it once, keep your credentials scoped, and treat the pay-per-use meter as a first-class part of the design.

Sources

Grouped by first-party and third-party so you can weigh each claim.

Official

• X docs: MCP server overview and troubleshooting
• xurl repository (the mcp bridge)
• X API pricing docs
• @XDevelopers launch post on X

Reported and community

• TechCrunch: X now offers an MCP server (write-access framing)
• @StanleyMasinde_ on the pay-per-use criticism