How to integrate Smartlead MCP with OpenAI Agents SDK

This guide walks you through connecting Smartlead to the OpenAI Agents SDK using the Composio tool router. By the end, you'll have a working Smartlead agent that can list your campaigns, create draft campaigns, check delivery tests, and review email accounts through natural language commands. This guide will help you understand how to give your OpenAI Agents SDK agent real control over a Smartlead account through Composio's Smartlead MCP server. Before we dive in, let's take a quick look at the key ideas and tools involved.

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Smartlead is a sales engagement platform for cold email campaigns, leads, sending accounts, inbox activity, deliverability, prospecting, and sender provisioning. Use it to run outbound sales at scale while keeping campaign operations, replies, and sender health in one place.

19 Tools

Introduction

This guide walks you through connecting Smartlead to the OpenAI Agents SDK using the Composio tool router. By the end, you'll have a working Smartlead agent that can list your campaigns, create draft campaigns, check delivery tests, and review email accounts through natural language commands.

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

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

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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 Smartlead
  • Configure an AI agent that can use Smartlead as a tool
  • Run a live chat session where you can ask the agent to perform Smartlead 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 Smartlead MCP server, and what's possible with it?

The Smartlead MCP server is an implementation of the Model Context Protocol that connects your AI agent and assistants like Claude, Cursor, etc directly to your Smartlead account. It provides structured and secure access to your campaigns, leads, inbox replies, sending accounts, deliverability tests, and prospecting tools, so your agent can manage campaigns, review performance, monitor replies, find prospects, and assess sender resources on your behalf.

  • Campaign creation and management: Have your agent create draft campaigns, review existing campaigns and their settings, or delete campaigns you no longer need.
  • Lead and performance monitoring: Let the agent list campaign leads, review email engagement statistics, remove unwanted leads, and resume paused leads.
  • Inbox and direct email actions: Instruct your agent to review lead replies across campaigns or send a single email from a connected Smartlead sending account.
  • Deliverability and account checks: Direct your agent to inspect sending account health, review spam and inbox placement tests, and organize tests with delivery folders.
  • Prospecting and sender research: Have your agent search prospect contacts, explore industries and saved searches, check prospect usage, compare sender vendors, and find available or purchased domains.

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 step09 STEPS
1

Prerequisites

Before starting, make sure you have:
  • Composio API Key and OpenAI API Key
  • Primary know-how of OpenAI Agents SDK
  • A live Smartlead project
  • Some knowledge of Python or Typescript
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
3

Install dependencies

npm install @composio/openai-agents @openai/agents dotenv

Install the Composio SDK and the OpenAI Agents SDK.

4

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.

5

Import dependencies

import 'dotenv/config';
import { Composio } from '@composio/core';
import { OpenAIAgentsProvider } from '@composio/openai-agents';
import { Agent, hostedMcpTool, run, OpenAIConversationsSession } from '@openai/agents';
import * as readline from 'readline';
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 Smartlead.
6

Set up the Composio instance

dotenv.config();

const composioApiKey = process.env.COMPOSIO_API_KEY;
const userId = process.env.USER_ID;

if (!composioApiKey) {
  throw new Error('COMPOSIO_API_KEY is not set. Create a .env file with COMPOSIO_API_KEY=your_key');
}
if (!userId) {
  throw new Error('USER_ID is not set');
}

// Initialize Composio
const composio = new Composio({
  apiKey: composioApiKey,
  provider: new OpenAIAgentsProvider(),
});
What's happening:
  • dotenv.config() loads your .env file so COMPOSIO_API_KEY and USER_ID are available as environment variables.
  • Creating a Composio instance using the API Key and OpenAIAgentsProvider class.
7

Create a Tool Router session

// Create Tool Router session for Smartlead
const session = await composio.create(userId as string, {
  toolkits: ['smartlead'],
});
const mcpUrl = session.mcp.url;

What is happening:

  • You give the Tool Router the user id and the toolkits you want available. Here, it is only smartlead.
  • The router checks the user's Smartlead connection and prepares the MCP endpoint.
  • The returned session.mcp.url is the MCP URL that your agent will use to access Smartlead.
  • This approach keeps things lightweight and lets the agent request Smartlead tools only when needed during the conversation.
8

Configure the agent

// Configure agent with MCP tool
const agent = new Agent({
  name: 'Assistant',
  model: 'gpt-5',
  instructions:
    'You are a helpful assistant that can access Smartlead. Help users perform Smartlead operations through natural language.',
  tools: [
    hostedMcpTool({
      serverLabel: 'tool_router',
      serverUrl: mcpUrl,
      headers: { 'x-api-key': composioApiKey },
      requireApproval: '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 Smartlead 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 object includes the Composio API key for secure authentication with the MCP server.
  • requireApproval: 'never' means the agent can execute Smartlead operations without asking for permission each time, making interactions smoother.
9

Start chat loop and handle conversation

// Keep conversation state across turns
const conversationSession = new OpenAIConversationsSession();

// Simple CLI
const rl = readline.createInterface({
  input: process.stdin,
  output: process.stdout,
  prompt: 'You: ',
});

console.log('\nComposio Tool Router session created.');
console.log('\nChat started. Type your requests below.');
console.log("Commands: 'exit', 'quit', or 'q' to end\n");

try {
  const first = await run(agent, 'What can you help me with?', { session: conversationSession });
  console.log(`Assistant: ${first.finalOutput}\n`);
} catch (e) {
  console.error('Error:', e instanceof Error ? e.message : e, '\n');
}

rl.prompt();

rl.on('line', async (userInput) => {
  const text = userInput.trim();

  if (['exit', 'quit', 'q'].includes(text.toLowerCase())) {
    console.log('Goodbye!');
    rl.close();
    process.exit(0);
  }

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

  try {
    const result = await run(agent, text, { session: conversationSession });
    console.log(`\nAssistant: ${result.finalOutput}\n`);
  } catch (e) {
    console.error('Error:', e instanceof Error ? e.message : e, '\n');
  }

  rl.prompt();
});

rl.on('close', () => {
  console.log('\n👋 Session ended.');
  process.exit(0);
});
What's happening:
  • The program prints a session URL that you visit to authorize Smartlead.
  • After authorization, the chat begins.
  • Each message you type is processed by the agent using run().
  • The responses are printed to the console.
  • Typing exit, quit, or q cleanly ends the chat.

Complete Code

Here's the complete code to get you started with Smartlead and OpenAI Agents SDK:

import 'dotenv/config';
import { Composio } from '@composio/core';
import { OpenAIAgentsProvider } from '@composio/openai-agents';
import { Agent, hostedMcpTool, run, OpenAIConversationsSession } from '@openai/agents';
import * as readline from 'readline';

const composioApiKey = process.env.COMPOSIO_API_KEY;
const userId = process.env.USER_ID;

if (!composioApiKey) {
  throw new Error('COMPOSIO_API_KEY is not set. Create a .env file with COMPOSIO_API_KEY=your_key');
}
if (!userId) {
  throw new Error('USER_ID is not set');
}

// Initialize Composio
const composio = new Composio({
  apiKey: composioApiKey,
  provider: new OpenAIAgentsProvider(),
});

async function main() {
  // Create Tool Router session
  const session = await composio.create(userId as string, {
    toolkits: ['smartlead'],
  });
  const mcpUrl = session.mcp.url;

  // Configure agent with MCP tool
  const agent = new Agent({
    name: 'Assistant',
    model: 'gpt-5',
    instructions:
      'You are a helpful assistant that can access Smartlead. Help users perform Smartlead operations through natural language.',
    tools: [
      hostedMcpTool({
        serverLabel: 'tool_router',
        serverUrl: mcpUrl,
        headers: { 'x-api-key': composioApiKey },
        requireApproval: 'never',
      }),
    ],
  });

  // Keep conversation state across turns
  const conversationSession = new OpenAIConversationsSession();

  // Simple CLI
  const rl = readline.createInterface({
    input: process.stdin,
    output: process.stdout,
    prompt: 'You: ',
  });

  console.log('\nComposio Tool Router session created.');
  console.log('\nChat started. Type your requests below.');
  console.log("Commands: 'exit', 'quit', or 'q' to end\n");

  try {
    const first = await run(agent, 'What can you help me with?', { session: conversationSession });
    console.log(`Assistant: ${first.finalOutput}\n`);
  } catch (e) {
    console.error('Error:', e instanceof Error ? e.message : e, '\n');
  }

  rl.prompt();

  rl.on('line', async (userInput) => {
    const text = userInput.trim();

    if (['exit', 'quit', 'q'].includes(text.toLowerCase())) {
      console.log('Goodbye!');
      rl.close();
      process.exit(0);
    }

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

    try {
      const result = await run(agent, text, { session: conversationSession });
      console.log(`\nAssistant: ${result.finalOutput}\n`);
    } catch (e) {
      console.error('Error:', e instanceof Error ? e.message : e, '\n');
    }

    rl.prompt();
  });

  rl.on('close', () => {
    console.log('\nSession ended.');
    process.exit(0);
  });
}

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

Conclusion

This was a starter code for integrating Smartlead MCP with OpenAI Agents SDK to build a functional AI agent that can interact with Smartlead.

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.
TOOLS

Supported Tools

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

Create Draft Campaign

Create a new campaign in DRAFTED status.

Create Smart Delivery Folder

Create an organizational folder for Smart Delivery tests.

Delete Campaign

Permanently delete a campaign and all associated sequences, mappings, and statistics.

Delete Smart Delivery Folder

Delete an empty Smart Delivery folder.

Get Campaign

Get configuration and performance summary for one Smartlead campaign by ID.

Get Campaigns

Get configuration and performance summaries for 1-20 Smartlead campaigns.

Get Smart Delivery Test

Get the documented configuration for one Smart Delivery spam test by ID.

Get Smart Prospect Usage

Get Smart Prospect lead-search metrics, fetch counts, daily limits, and available credit balance.

List Campaigns

List campaigns visible to the connected Smartlead account, optionally for one client.

List Smart Delivery Folders

List folders used to organize Smart Delivery tests.

List Smart Delivery Tests

List Smart Delivery spam and inbox-placement tests.

List Email Accounts

List connected sending accounts with health, warmup, usage, provider, and campaign filters.

List Inbox Replies

List lead replies across campaigns from Master Inbox using bounded filters and one page at a time.

List Smart Prospect Industries

List and search Smart Prospect industry filter values without searching contacts or consuming contact-fetch credits.

List Purchased Smart Senders Domains

List domains already purchased through Smart Senders.

List Saved Smart Prospect Searches

List saved Smart Prospect search definitions without executing them or consuming contact-search credits.

List Smart Senders Vendors

List Smart Senders marketplace vendors and current domain/mailbox pricing without placing an order.

Search Available Smart Senders Domains

Check Smart Senders marketplace domain availability for a vendor.

Search Smart Prospect Contacts (Consumes Credits)

Search one page of Smart Prospect contacts.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

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

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 Smartlead tools.

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

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