How to integrate 7shifts MCP with Autogen

This guide walks you through connecting 7shifts to AutoGen using the Composio tool router. By the end, you'll have a working 7shifts agent that can list your shifts, view users and assignments, manage departments, and browse locations through natural language commands. This guide will help you understand how to give your AutoGen agent real control over a 7shifts account through Composio's 7shifts MCP server. Before we dive in, let's take a quick look at the key ideas and tools involved.

7shifts logo7shifts
Api Key

7shifts is a restaurant team management platform for scheduling, time clocks, payroll, and team communication. It helps operators keep labor, shifts, and staff workflows organized in one place.

10 Tools

Introduction

This guide walks you through connecting 7shifts to AutoGen using the Composio tool router. By the end, you'll have a working 7shifts agent that can list your shifts, view users and assignments, manage departments, and browse locations through natural language commands.

This guide will help you understand how to give your AutoGen agent real control over a 7shifts account through Composio's 7shifts MCP server.

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

Also integrate 7shifts with

TL;DR

Here's what you'll learn:
  • Get and set up your OpenAI and Composio API keys
  • Install the required dependencies for Autogen and Composio
  • Initialize Composio and create a Tool Router session for 7shifts
  • Wire that MCP URL into Autogen using McpWorkbench and StreamableHttpServerParams
  • Configure an Autogen AssistantAgent that can call 7shifts tools
  • Run a live chat loop where you ask the agent to perform 7shifts operations

What is AutoGen?

Autogen is a framework for building multi-agent conversational AI systems from Microsoft. It enables you to create agents that can collaborate, use tools, and maintain complex workflows.

Key features include:

  • Multi-Agent Systems: Build collaborative agent workflows
  • MCP Workbench: Native support for Model Context Protocol tools
  • Streaming HTTP: Connect to external services through streamable HTTP
  • AssistantAgent: Pre-built agent class for tool-using assistants

What is the 7shifts MCP server, and what's possible with it?

The 7shifts MCP server is an implementation of the Model Context Protocol that connects your AI agent and assistants like Claude, Cursor, etc directly to your 7shifts account. It provides structured and secure access to your companies, locations, departments, employees, assignments, and scheduled shifts, so your agent can review staffing, find team members, check assignments, and manage departments on your behalf.

  • Scheduled shift review: Have your agent list scheduled shifts by employee, location, department, role, time range, publication status, or open shift status.
  • Employee lookup: Let the agent find employees and administrators by name, status, or assigned location, department, or role.
  • Assignment checks: Direct your agent to review the locations, departments, and roles assigned to a specific team member.
  • Location and company discovery: Instruct your agent to list the companies and restaurant locations available in your connected 7shifts account.
  • Department management: Have your agent list, review, create, rename, set defaults for, or delete departments, including transferring roles and shifts when removing one.

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

Step by step08 STEPS
1

Prerequisites

You will need:

  • A Composio API key
  • An OpenAI API key (used by Autogen's OpenAIChatCompletionClient)
  • A 7shifts account you can connect to Composio
  • Some basic familiarity with Autogen and Python async
2

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
  • Log in to the Composio dashboard.
  • Navigate to your API settings and generate a new API key.
  • Store this key securely as you'll need it for authentication.
3

Install dependencies

bash
pip install composio python-dotenv
pip install autogen-agentchat autogen-ext-openai autogen-ext-tools

Install Composio, Autogen extensions, and dotenv.

What's happening:

  • composio connects your agent to 7shifts via MCP
  • autogen-agentchat provides the AssistantAgent class
  • autogen-ext-openai provides the OpenAI model client
  • autogen-ext-tools provides MCP workbench support

4

Set up environment variables

bash
COMPOSIO_API_KEY=your-composio-api-key
OPENAI_API_KEY=your-openai-api-key
USER_ID=your-user-identifier@example.com

Create a .env file in your project folder.

What's happening:

  • COMPOSIO_API_KEY is required to talk to Composio
  • OPENAI_API_KEY is used by Autogen's OpenAI client
  • USER_ID is how Composio identifies which user's 7shifts connections to use
5

Import dependencies and create Tool Router session

python
import asyncio
import os
from dotenv import load_dotenv
from composio import Composio

from autogen_agentchat.agents import AssistantAgent
from autogen_ext.models.openai import OpenAIChatCompletionClient
from autogen_ext.tools.mcp import McpWorkbench, StreamableHttpServerParams

load_dotenv()

async def main():
    # Initialize Composio and create a 7shifts session
    composio = Composio(api_key=os.getenv("COMPOSIO_API_KEY"))
    session = composio.create(
        user_id=os.getenv("USER_ID"),
        toolkits=["7shifts"]
    )
    url = session.mcp.url
What's happening:
  • load_dotenv() reads your .env file
  • Composio(api_key=...) initializes the SDK
  • create(...) creates a Tool Router session that exposes 7shifts tools
  • session.mcp.url is the MCP endpoint that Autogen will connect to
6

Configure MCP parameters for Autogen

python
# Configure MCP server parameters for Streamable HTTP
server_params = StreamableHttpServerParams(
    url=url,
    timeout=30.0,
    sse_read_timeout=300.0,
    terminate_on_close=True,
    headers={"x-api-key": os.getenv("COMPOSIO_API_KEY")}
)

Autogen expects parameters describing how to talk to the MCP server. That is what StreamableHttpServerParams is for.

What's happening:

  • url points to the Tool Router MCP endpoint from Composio
  • timeout is the HTTP timeout for requests
  • sse_read_timeout controls how long to wait when streaming responses
  • terminate_on_close=True cleans up the MCP server process when the workbench is closed
7

Create the model client and agent

python
# Create model client
model_client = OpenAIChatCompletionClient(
    model="gpt-5",
    api_key=os.getenv("OPENAI_API_KEY")
)

# Use McpWorkbench as context manager
async with McpWorkbench(server_params) as workbench:
    # Create 7shifts assistant agent with MCP tools
    agent = AssistantAgent(
        name="7shifts_assistant",
        description="An AI assistant that helps with 7shifts operations.",
        model_client=model_client,
        workbench=workbench,
        model_client_stream=True,
        max_tool_iterations=10
    )

What's happening:

  • OpenAIChatCompletionClient wraps the OpenAI model for Autogen
  • McpWorkbench connects the agent to the MCP tools
  • AssistantAgent is configured with the 7shifts tools from the workbench
8

Run the interactive chat loop

python
print("Chat started! Type 'exit' or 'quit' to end the conversation.\n")
print("Ask any 7shifts related question or task to the agent.\n")

# Conversation loop
while True:
    user_input = input("You: ").strip()

    if user_input.lower() in ["exit", "quit", "bye"]:
        print("\nGoodbye!")
        break

    if not user_input:
        continue

    print("\nAgent is thinking...\n")

    # Run the agent with streaming
    try:
        response_text = ""
        async for message in agent.run_stream(task=user_input):
            if hasattr(message, "content") and message.content:
                response_text = message.content

        # Print the final response
        if response_text:
            print(f"Agent: {response_text}\n")
        else:
            print("Agent: I encountered an issue processing your request.\n")

    except Exception as e:
        print(f"Agent: Sorry, I encountered an error: {str(e)}\n")
What's happening:
  • The script prompts you in a loop with You:
  • Autogen passes your input to the model, which decides which 7shifts tools to call via MCP
  • agent.run_stream(...) yields streaming messages as the agent thinks and calls tools
  • Typing exit, quit, or bye ends the loop

Complete Code

Here's the complete code to get you started with 7shifts and AutoGen:

python
import asyncio
import os
from dotenv import load_dotenv
from composio import Composio

from autogen_agentchat.agents import AssistantAgent
from autogen_ext.models.openai import OpenAIChatCompletionClient
from autogen_ext.tools.mcp import McpWorkbench, StreamableHttpServerParams

load_dotenv()

async def main():
    # Initialize Composio and create a 7shifts session
    composio = Composio(api_key=os.getenv("COMPOSIO_API_KEY"))
    session = composio.create(
        user_id=os.getenv("USER_ID"),
        toolkits=["7shifts"]
    )
    url = session.mcp.url

    # Configure MCP server parameters for Streamable HTTP
    server_params = StreamableHttpServerParams(
        url=url,
        timeout=30.0,
        sse_read_timeout=300.0,
        terminate_on_close=True,
        headers={"x-api-key": os.getenv("COMPOSIO_API_KEY")}
    )

    # Create model client
    model_client = OpenAIChatCompletionClient(
        model="gpt-5",
        api_key=os.getenv("OPENAI_API_KEY")
    )

    # Use McpWorkbench as context manager
    async with McpWorkbench(server_params) as workbench:
        # Create 7shifts assistant agent with MCP tools
        agent = AssistantAgent(
            name="7shifts_assistant",
            description="An AI assistant that helps with 7shifts operations.",
            model_client=model_client,
            workbench=workbench,
            model_client_stream=True,
            max_tool_iterations=10
        )

        print("Chat started! Type 'exit' or 'quit' to end the conversation.\n")
        print("Ask any 7shifts related question or task to the agent.\n")

        # Conversation loop
        while True:
            user_input = input("You: ").strip()

            if user_input.lower() in ['exit', 'quit', 'bye']:
                print("\nGoodbye!")
                break

            if not user_input:
                continue

            print("\nAgent is thinking...\n")

            # Run the agent with streaming
            try:
                response_text = ""
                async for message in agent.run_stream(task=user_input):
                    if hasattr(message, 'content') and message.content:
                        response_text = message.content

                # Print the final response
                if response_text:
                    print(f"Agent: {response_text}\n")
                else:
                    print("Agent: I encountered an issue processing your request.\n")

            except Exception as e:
                print(f"Agent: Sorry, I encountered an error: {str(e)}\n")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    asyncio.run(main())

Conclusion

You now have an Autogen assistant wired into 7shifts through Composio's Tool Router and MCP. From here you can:
  • Add more toolkits to the toolkits list, for example notion or hubspot
  • Refine the agent description to point it at specific workflows
  • Wrap this script behind a UI, Slack bot, or internal tool
Once the pattern is clear for 7shifts, you can reuse the same structure for other MCP-enabled apps with minimal code changes.
TOOLS

Supported Tools

Every 7shifts action and event your agent gets out of the box.

Create Department

Create a department at a company location, optionally make it the location's default department, and return its new department ID.

Delete Department

Permanently delete a department, optionally transferring its roles and shifts to another department.

Get Department

Return one department by company and department ID.

Get User Assignments

Return one user's assigned locations, departments, and roles in a single read.

List Companies

Return companies available to the connected access token, including the company IDs needed by company-scoped tools.

List Departments

List one page of departments in a company, optionally filtered by location or modification date, with a cursor when more are available.

List Locations

List one page of locations in a company and return location IDs used to filter schedules, users, and departments, with a cursor when more are available.

List Shifts

List one page of scheduled shifts for a company with employee, location, department, role, time-range, publication-state, and open-shift filters, with a cursor when more are available.

List Users

List employees and administrators in a 7shifts company, with optional status, name, and one assignment filter.

Update Department

Replace a department's name and default setting.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

With a standalone 7shifts MCP server, the agents and LLMs can only access a fixed set of 7shifts tools tied to that server. However, with the Composio Tool Router, agents can dynamically load tools from 7shifts and many other apps based on the task at hand, all through a single MCP endpoint.

Yes, you can. Autogen 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 7shifts tools.

Yes, absolutely. You can configure which 7shifts 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.

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 7shifts data and credentials are handled as safely as possible.

Start with 7shifts.It takes 30 seconds.

Managed auth, hosted MCP servers, and every 7shifts tool your agent needs.Free to start.

Start building