How to integrate Harvest MCP with Mastra AI

This guide walks you through connecting Harvest to Mastra AI using the Composio tool router. By the end, you'll have a working Harvest agent that can create a new client for acme corp, log an expense for project 'website redesign', generate an invoice for hours worked this week through natural language commands. This guide will help you understand how to give your Mastra AI agent real control over a Harvest account through Composio's Harvest MCP server. Before we dive in, let's take a quick look at the key ideas and tools involved.

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Harvest

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Harvest is a time-tracking and invoicing platform for teams and freelancers. It helps you log billable hours, manage projects, and streamline payments.

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Introduction

This guide will help you understand how to give your Mastra AI agent real control over a Harvest account through Composio's Harvest MCP server.

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

Also integrate Harvest with

OpenAI Agents SDK Claude Agent SDK Claude Code Claude Cowork Codex OpenClaw Hermes CLI Google ADK LangChain Vercel AI SDK LlamaIndex CrewAI

TL;DR

Here's what you'll learn:

Set up your environment so Mastra, OpenAI, and Composio work together
Create a Tool Router session in Composio that exposes Harvest tools
Connect Mastra's MCP client to the Composio generated MCP URL
Fetch Harvest tool definitions and attach them as a toolset
Build a Mastra agent that can reason, call tools, and return structured results
Run an interactive CLI where you can chat with your Harvest agent

What is Mastra AI?

Mastra AI is a TypeScript framework for building AI agents with tool support. It provides a clean API for creating agents that can use external services through MCP.

Key features include:

MCP Client: Built-in support for Model Context Protocol servers
Toolsets: Organize tools into logical groups
Step Callbacks: Monitor and debug agent execution
OpenAI Integration: Works with OpenAI models via @ai-sdk/openai

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

The Harvest MCP server is an implementation of the Model Context Protocol that connects your AI agent and assistants like Claude, Cursor, etc directly to your Harvest account. It provides structured and secure access to your time-tracking, invoicing, and project management data, so your agent can create clients, log expenses, send invoices, record payments, and manage estimates automatically on your behalf.

Client and contact management: Seamlessly create new clients and add contacts to keep your client list up to date without manual entry.
Estimate creation and communication: Automatically generate new estimates, categorize line items, and send estimate messages or updates to clients.
Expense tracking automation: Log new expense entries against projects, ensuring accurate financial records and effortless cost tracking.
Streamlined invoicing and payments: Create professional invoices, categorize invoice items, send invoice notifications, and record payments as soon as they happen.
Project financial workflow optimization: Let your agent handle the full cycle—from creating clients to sending invoices and tracking payments—saving your team valuable time and reducing errors.

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:

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

Step-by-step Guide

Step by step09 STEPS

Prerequisites

Before starting, make sure you have:

Node.js 18 or higher
A Composio account with an active API key
An OpenAI API key
Basic familiarity with TypeScript

Getting API Keys for OpenAI and Composio

OpenAI API Key

Go to the OpenAI dashboard and create an API key.
You need credits or a connected billing setup to use the models.
Store the key somewhere safe.

Composio API Key

Log in to the Composio dashboard.
Go to Settings and copy your API key.
This key lets your Mastra agent talk to Composio and reach Harvest through MCP.

Install dependencies

bash

npm install @composio/core @mastra/core @mastra/mcp @ai-sdk/openai dotenv

Install the required packages.

What's happening:

@composio/core is the Composio SDK for creating MCP sessions
@mastra/core provides the Agent class
@mastra/mcp is Mastra's MCP client
@ai-sdk/openai is the model wrapper for OpenAI
dotenv loads environment variables from .env

Set up environment variables

bash

COMPOSIO_API_KEY=your_composio_api_key_here
COMPOSIO_USER_ID=your_user_id_here
OPENAI_API_KEY=your_openai_api_key_here

Create a .env file in your project root.

What's happening:

COMPOSIO_API_KEY authenticates your requests to Composio
COMPOSIO_USER_ID tells Composio which user this session belongs to
OPENAI_API_KEY lets the Mastra agent call OpenAI models

Import libraries and validate environment

typescript

import "dotenv/config";
import { openai } from "@ai-sdk/openai";
import { Agent } from "@mastra/core/agent";
import { MCPClient } from "@mastra/mcp";
import { Composio } from "@composio/core";
import * as readline from "readline";

import type { AiMessageType } from "@mastra/core/agent";

const openaiAPIKey = process.env.OPENAI_API_KEY;
const composioAPIKey = process.env.COMPOSIO_API_KEY;
const composioUserID = process.env.COMPOSIO_USER_ID;

if (!openaiAPIKey) throw new Error("OPENAI_API_KEY is not set");
if (!composioAPIKey) throw new Error("COMPOSIO_API_KEY is not set");
if (!composioUserID) throw new Error("COMPOSIO_USER_ID is not set");

const composio = new Composio({
  apiKey: composioAPIKey as string,
});

What's happening:

dotenv/config auto loads your .env so process.env.* is available
openai gives you a Mastra compatible model wrapper
Agent is the Mastra agent that will call tools and produce answers
MCPClient connects Mastra to your Composio MCP server
Composio is used to create a Tool Router session

Create a Tool Router session for Harvest

typescript

async function main() {
  const session = await composio.create(
    composioUserID as string,
    {
      toolkits: ["harvest"],
    },
  );

  const composioMCPUrl = session.mcp.url;
  console.log("Harvest MCP URL:", composioMCPUrl);

What's happening:

create spins up a short-lived MCP HTTP endpoint for this user
The toolkits array contains "harvest" for Harvest access
session.mcp.url is the MCP URL that Mastra's MCPClient will connect to

Configure Mastra MCP client and fetch tools

typescript

const mcpClient = new MCPClient({
    id: composioUserID as string,
    servers: {
      nasdaq: {
        url: new URL(composioMCPUrl),
        requestInit: {
          headers: session.mcp.headers,
        },
      },
    },
    timeout: 30_000,
  });

console.log("Fetching MCP tools from Composio...");
const composioTools = await mcpClient.getTools();
console.log("Number of tools:", Object.keys(composioTools).length);

What's happening:

MCPClient takes an id for this client and a list of MCP servers
The headers property includes the x-api-key for authentication
getTools fetches the tool definitions exposed by the Harvest toolkit

Create the Mastra agent

typescript

const agent = new Agent({
    name: "harvest-mastra-agent",
    instructions: "You are an AI agent with Harvest tools via Composio.",
    model: "openai/gpt-5",
  });

What's happening:

Agent is the core Mastra agent
name is just an identifier for logging and debugging
instructions guide the agent to use tools instead of only answering in natural language
model uses openai("gpt-5") to configure the underlying LLM

Set up interactive chat interface

typescript

let messages: AiMessageType[] = [];

console.log("Chat started! Type 'exit' or 'quit' to end.\n");

const rl = readline.createInterface({
  input: process.stdin,
  output: process.stdout,
  prompt: "> ",
});

rl.prompt();

rl.on("line", async (userInput: string) => {
  const trimmedInput = userInput.trim();

  if (["exit", "quit", "bye"].includes(trimmedInput.toLowerCase())) {
    console.log("\nGoodbye!");
    rl.close();
    process.exit(0);
  }

  if (!trimmedInput) {
    rl.prompt();
    return;
  }

  messages.push({
    id: crypto.randomUUID(),
    role: "user",
    content: trimmedInput,
  });

  console.log("\nAgent is thinking...\n");

  try {
    const response = await agent.generate(messages, {
      toolsets: {
        harvest: composioTools,
      },
      maxSteps: 8,
    });

    const { text } = response;

    if (text && text.trim().length > 0) {
      console.log(`Agent: ${text}\n`);
        messages.push({
          id: crypto.randomUUID(),
          role: "assistant",
          content: text,
        });
      }
    } catch (error) {
      console.error("\nError:", error);
    }

    rl.prompt();
  });

  rl.on("close", async () => {
    console.log("\nSession ended.");
    await mcpClient.disconnect();
    process.exit(0);
  });
}

main().catch((err) => {
  console.error("Fatal error:", err);
  process.exit(1);
});

What's happening:

messages keeps the full conversation history in Mastra's expected format
agent.generate runs the agent with conversation history and Harvest toolsets
maxSteps limits how many tool calls the agent can take in a single run
onStepFinish is a hook that prints intermediate steps for debugging

Complete Code

Here's the complete code to get you started with Harvest and Mastra AI:

typescript

import "dotenv/config";
import { openai } from "@ai-sdk/openai";
import { Agent } from "@mastra/core/agent";
import { MCPClient } from "@mastra/mcp";
import { Composio } from "@composio/core";
import * as readline from "readline";

import type { AiMessageType } from "@mastra/core/agent";

const openaiAPIKey = process.env.OPENAI_API_KEY;
const composioAPIKey = process.env.COMPOSIO_API_KEY;
const composioUserID = process.env.COMPOSIO_USER_ID;

if (!openaiAPIKey) throw new Error("OPENAI_API_KEY is not set");
if (!composioAPIKey) throw new Error("COMPOSIO_API_KEY is not set");
if (!composioUserID) throw new Error("COMPOSIO_USER_ID is not set");

const composio = new Composio({ apiKey: composioAPIKey as string });

async function main() {
  const session = await composio.create(composioUserID as string, {
    toolkits: ["harvest"],
  });

  const composioMCPUrl = session.mcp.url;

  const mcpClient = new MCPClient({
    id: composioUserID as string,
    servers: {
      harvest: {
        url: new URL(composioMCPUrl),
        requestInit: {
          headers: session.mcp.headers,
        },
      },
    },
    timeout: 30_000,
  });

  const composioTools = await mcpClient.getTools();

  const agent = new Agent({
    name: "harvest-mastra-agent",
    instructions: "You are an AI agent with Harvest tools via Composio.",
    model: "openai/gpt-5",
  });

  let messages: AiMessageType[] = [];

  const rl = readline.createInterface({
    input: process.stdin,
    output: process.stdout,
    prompt: "> ",
  });

  rl.prompt();

  rl.on("line", async (input: string) => {
    const trimmed = input.trim();
    if (["exit", "quit"].includes(trimmed.toLowerCase())) {
      rl.close();
      return;
    }

    messages.push({ id: crypto.randomUUID(), role: "user", content: trimmed });

    const { text } = await agent.generate(messages, {
      toolsets: { harvest: composioTools },
      maxSteps: 8,
    });

    if (text) {
      console.log(`Agent: ${text}\n`);
      messages.push({ id: crypto.randomUUID(), role: "assistant", content: text });
    }

    rl.prompt();
  });

  rl.on("close", async () => {
    await mcpClient.disconnect();
    process.exit(0);
  });
}

main();

Conclusion

You've built a Mastra AI agent that can interact with Harvest through Composio's Tool Router. You can extend this further by:

Adding other toolkits like Gmail, Slack, or GitHub
Building a web-based chat interface around this agent
Using multiple MCP endpoints to enable cross-app workflows

TOOLS

Supported Tools

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

Create Client

Tool to create a new client.

Create Client Contact

Tool to create a new client contact.

Create Estimate

Tool to create a new estimate.

Create Estimate Item Category

Tool to create a new estimate item category in Harvest.

Create Estimate Message

Tool to create a new message for an estimate.

Create Expense

Tool to create a new expense entry.

Create Invoice

Tool to create a new invoice.

Create Invoice Item Category

Tool to create a new invoice item category.

Create Invoice Message

Creates a new message for an invoice in Harvest.

Create Invoice Payment

Tool to create a new payment on an invoice.

Create Project

Create a new project in Harvest.

Create Task

Creates a new task in Harvest.

Create Time Entry

Tool to create a new time entry.

Create User

Creates a new user in Harvest and sends an invitation email to the specified address.

Delete Client

Tool to delete a client.

Delete Client Contact

Permanently deletes a client contact from Harvest.

Delete Estimate

Tool to delete an estimate.

Delete Estimate Message

Tool to delete an estimate message.

Delete Invoice

Delete an invoice from Harvest.

Delete Invoice Item Category

Tool to delete an invoice item category from Harvest.

Delete Invoice Message

Tool to delete a message from an invoice.

Delete Invoice Payment

Tool to delete an invoice payment.

Delete Project

Tool to delete a project.

Delete Task

Tool to delete a task.

Delete Time Entry

Tool to delete a time entry.

Delete User

Tool to delete a user.

Get Client

Retrieves a specific client by ID from Harvest.

Get Company Info

Retrieves detailed information about the company associated with the authenticated Harvest account.

Get Estimate

Tool to retrieve a specific estimate by ID.

Get Invoice

Tool to retrieve a specific invoice by ID.

Get Project

Tool to retrieve a specific Harvest project by ID.

Get Task

Tool to retrieve a specific task by ID.

Get Time Entry

Tool to retrieve a single time entry by ID.

Get User

Tool to retrieve a specific user by ID.

List Client Contacts

Tool to list client contacts.

List Clients

Tool to list clients.

List Estimate Messages

Lists all messages associated with a specific estimate in Harvest.

List Expense Categories

Tool to list expense categories.

List Invoice Item Categories

Tool to retrieve invoice item categories.

List Invoice Messages

Tool to list messages associated with a given invoice.

List Invoice Payments

List all payments recorded for a specific invoice.

List Invoices

Tool to list invoices.

List projects

Tool to list projects.

List Tasks

Tool to list tasks.

List Time Entries

Tool to retrieve a list of time entries.

List Users

Tool to list users.

Update Client

Tool to update an existing client.

Update Client Contact

Tool to update a client contact.

Update Company Info

Updates company time tracking settings in Harvest.

Update Estimate

Tool to update an existing estimate.

Update Estimate Item Category

Updates an existing estimate item category's name in Harvest.

Update Expense

Tool to update an existing expense.

Update Invoice

Tool to update an existing invoice.

Update Project

Tool to update an existing project.

Update Task

Tool to update an existing task.

Update Time Entry

Tool to update an existing time entry.

Update User

Tool to update an existing user.

FRAMEWORKS

How to build Harvest MCP Agent with another framework

OpenAI Agents SDK

Use Harvest MCP with OpenAI Agents SDK

Claude Agent SDK

Use Harvest MCP with Claude Agent SDK

Claude Code

Use Harvest MCP with Claude Code

Claude Cowork

Use Harvest MCP with Claude Cowork

Codex

Use Harvest MCP with Codex

OpenClaw

Use Harvest MCP with OpenClaw

Hermes

Use Harvest MCP with Hermes

CLI

Use Harvest MCP with CLI

Google ADK

Use Harvest MCP with Google ADK

LangChain

Use Harvest MCP with LangChain

Vercel AI SDK

Use Harvest MCP with Vercel AI SDK

LlamaIndex

Use Harvest MCP with LlamaIndex

CrewAI

Use Harvest MCP with CrewAI

MORE TOOLKITS

Explore Other Toolkits

Toolkit marketplace

Google Sheets

Oauth2

Google Sheets is a cloud-based spreadsheet tool for real-time collaboration and data analysis. It lets teams work together from anywhere, updating information instantly.

Notion

Oauth2Api Key

Notion is a collaborative workspace for notes, docs, wikis, and tasks. It streamlines team knowledge, project tracking, and workflow customization in one place.

Airtable

Oauth2Api Key

Airtable combines the flexibility of spreadsheets with the power of a database for easy project and data management. Teams use Airtable to organize, track, and collaborate with custom views and automations.

Asana

Oauth2

Asana is a collaborative work management platform for teams to organize and track projects. It streamlines teamwork, boosts productivity, and keeps everyone aligned on goals.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

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

Yes, you can. Mastra AI 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 Harvest tools.

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

Start with Harvest.It takes 30 seconds.

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

Start building

Customer stories

Teams ship real agents on Composio

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Karan skipped his own birthday party to fix our critical issue. It was 10pm and he diverted his Waymo to help us instead. This really sets the bar — it shows the commitment you need when users rely on your software.

Harsha Gaddipati

Co-founder, Slashy

A lot of students tell us that the moment their connected tools start talking to each other inside Opennote feels almost magical. The agent just knows them, and it's immensely helped keep new users on the platform.

Abhi Arya

Co-founder, Opennote

We chose Composio over Pipedream because it delivered depth where it mattered — niche tools and tricky edge cases other platforms simply ignored. That gave us confidence to scale without compromising.

Nirman Dave

CEO, Zams

As a solo builder, shipping fast is life or death. The only way I can outcompete incumbents is by outmanoeuvring them. Getting bogged down managing agent auth would have been a death sentence.

Ryan Yu

Founder, Extra Thursday

Before Composio, adding tool integrations was slow and resource-intensive. Each one could take weeks of engineering time, and maintaining them meant constantly keeping up with API changes.

Tomisin Jenrola

Founder & CEO, SwarmZero

With hands-on help from their founder, we integrated Gmail and Google Drive in just 30 minutes. This level of personal support and commitment is exactly what startups should strive for.

Jerome Leclanche

Co-Founder, Ingram Technologies

How to integrate Harvest MCP with Mastra AI

Connect Harvest without auth hassles

Introduction

Also integrate Harvest with

TL;DR

What is Mastra AI?

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

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

What is Composio SDK?

How the Composio SDK works

Step-by-step Guide

Prerequisites

Getting API Keys for OpenAI and Composio

Install dependencies

Set up environment variables

Import libraries and validate environment

Create a Tool Router session for Harvest

Configure Mastra MCP client and fetch tools

Create the Mastra agent

Set up interactive chat interface

Complete Code

Conclusion

Supported Tools

How to build Harvest MCP Agent with another framework

OpenAI Agents SDK

Claude Agent SDK

Claude Code

Claude Cowork

Codex

OpenClaw

Hermes

CLI

Google ADK

LangChain

Vercel AI SDK

LlamaIndex

CrewAI

Explore Other Toolkits

Google Sheets

Notion

Airtable

Asana

Frequently asked questions

What are the differences in Tool Router MCP and Harvest MCP?+

Can I use Tool Router MCP with Mastra AI?+

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

How safe is my data with Composio Tool Router?+

Start with Harvest.It takes 30 seconds.

Teams ship real agents on Composio