affiliate-mcp

Integrate your affiliate networks with Claude or Codex.

Network operators: most adapters are community-built and experimental. Adoption gives your team ownership and a verification path; promotion to partial or production still requires current evidence and maintainer review. Find your network's issue under the adopt-this-network label.

Affiliate networks have two sides — and neither has a first-class AI workspace integration.

Publishers earn commissions from the programmes they join. Brands (and the agencies who manage them) run those programmes and pay the commissions out. I wanted to chat to my own affiliate data in the AI workspace I already use; none of the networks had shipped an integration for either side, so I built a broad beta set that covers both publisher and advertiser-side work.

If you're a publisher, you can ask:

"What did I earn across all networks last month?"

"Which programmes have transactions still pending after 90 days?"

"Compare my earnings month on month."

If you're on the brand side — running a programme, or an agency managing several — you can ask:

"How is Acme's programme doing this quarter?"

"Show me revenue across all my clients this week."

"Any anomalies in the affiliate data?"

Your AI workspace figures out which networks to call, fetches the data live from their APIs, and gives you the answer. You can use Claude or Codex to turn it into a sheet, an artifact, an email to your boss, whatever you want.

Free and open source. MIT licensed. Bring your own keys. For the product philosophy, read the AI-native affiliate data manifesto.

Who this is for

This tool serves two audiences. Pick the one that fits — or both, if you wear both hats.

You're a publisher. You earn commissions from affiliate programmes, your dashboards can't keep up with how fast you can think, and you want one conversation that spans every network you're on.

You're on the brand side. You run an affiliate programme — or you're an agency managing several brands' programmes. You want one question that fans out across networks and brands, and surfaces what the dashboards bury: publishers trending down, reversal spikes, dead links, programmes drifting toward zero.

Either way, you do not need to know what an API is or write code. The non-technical Claude Desktop track needs:

• Your existing logins to the affiliate networks you already work with.
• Claude Desktop installed.

The technical track uses a terminal, Node.js 20 or newer, and Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Codex, or another compatible local stdio MCP client; check the support states below before relying on an untested client journey.

And if you work for an affiliate network, this is also for you. The bundled adapters are placeholders until each network adopts its own. See CONTRIBUTING.md under "Adopting your network".

Why bother?

One question, every network and every brand. "Show me earnings by programme" hits your configured publisher networks in parallel. On the brand side, "show me revenue across all my clients this week" fans out across every brand and network pair you've registered.

Plain English, not filters. No more clicking through date pickers and saved views. "Last quarter, status pending, sorted by amount" is the whole prompt.

Your data, your machine, by default. It runs locally. Your keys live in ~/.affiliate-mcp/.env, locked to your user account. Optional anonymous usage telemetry is off by default and never contains affiliate data, credentials, prompts, arguments, results, or error text. The networks see the same API calls they'd see from their dashboard.

Catches what dashboards bury. Stale transactions, inactive programmes, dead deeplinks and week-on-week drops are surfaced by the packaged skills.

Optional local result cache. Persistent caching is off by default. Set AFFILIATE_MCP_CACHE=on in ~/.affiliate-mcp/.env to cache selected programme inventory and closed reporting windows locally with owner-only permissions. Open and current windows always go live. On a shared machine where you cannot rely on file permissions, leave caching off. Run affiliate-networks-mcp cache clear to remove cached results; see PRIVACY.md for the storage and retention contract.

Getting started

Choose one of two primary tracks. Both run the same local MCP server and keep your credentials on your machine.

Track 1: non-technical, Claude Desktop

Use the host-native Claude Desktop .mcpb. No Terminal, Node.js, or manual configuration is required.

1. Download affiliate-networks-mcp-<version>.mcpb from the latest GitHub release.
2. In Claude Desktop, open Settings → Extensions → Advanced settings → Install Extension… and select the downloaded file.
3. Add credentials for the networks you use, then ask Claude "What affiliate networks do you have access to?"

The extension does not update itself: download the latest .mcpb and install it over the top; saved credentials are kept (full steps for every install path). The native extension currently offers secure setup fields for Awin, CJ, Impact, and Partnerize. It runs the complete server, so an existing ~/.affiliate-mcp/.env continues to enable every other adapter. A portable browser setup flow for the remaining networks is planned; until then, use the technical track below when adding them.

The standalone Electron/DMG setup app is a fixes-only compatibility fallback for existing macOS users. It is not a third primary onboarding track. See desktop/README.md for its remaining use case.

Track 2: technical and semi-technical, CLI plus local stdio

You'll need Node.js 20 or newer installed. If you don't have it, use the Node.js download page.

1. Run the setup wizard. Open Terminal (macOS) or PowerShell (Windows):

npx affiliate-networks-mcp setup

It walks you through one network at a time, asks which side you want, shows where to find each credential, then checks it against the live network.

For brand-side networks, the wizard asks which brands those credentials can reach, then lets you pick local nicknames. The mapping is saved to ~/.affiliate-mcp/brands.json, see Managing brands.

2. Check everything is wired up.

npx affiliate-networks-mcp test

You should see one line per network: ok for everything that's healthy, error — <reason> for anything that isn't.

3. Connect it to your local MCP client. Use a host-native package, the CLI installer, or local stdio configuration. The setup wizard offers the shipped CLI installer targets at the end automatically.

Claude Desktop (Mac/Windows app):

npx affiliate-networks-mcp install

Finds your Claude Desktop config, adds the affiliate entry alongside anything else you already have, takes a timestamped backup first. Restart Claude Desktop after it finishes. Flags: --desktop / --code / --codex to pick one, --all to include Codex and skip prompting, --dry-run to preview, --force-overwrite if your existing config is malformed JSON.

Claude Code (terminal):

claude plugin marketplace add bobberrisford/affiliatemcp
claude plugin install affiliate-networks-mcp@affiliatemcp

Registers the MCP server and bundled skills in one step. (Or use the install command above — it detects Claude Code too.) Already inside a Claude Code session? Just ask it to install the affiliate-mcp plugin and it runs these commands for you; no terminal juggling needed.

Codex (OpenAI, terminal or IDE extension):

npx affiliate-networks-mcp install --codex

This adds the local stdio MCP server to ~/.codex/config.toml; the same MCP config is used by the Codex CLI and Codex IDE extension. Manual setup:

codex mcp add affiliate -- npx -y affiliate-networks-mcp

Verify: open Codex, run /mcp, then ask "What affiliate networks do you have access to?" This is OpenAI/Codex support, not ChatGPT connector support. ChatGPT requires a reachable HTTPS MCP server and is scoped separately.

Claude Cowork desktop (org accounts):

Cowork syncs plugins from a GitHub repo, but blocks public repos from org marketplaces — so you need a private mirror first. The setup wizard offers this at the end, or run install and pick Cowork:

npx affiliate-networks-mcp install      # detects your clients, offers Cowork

(Or go straight to it: npx affiliate-networks-mcp cowork-mirror.)

It creates <you>/affiliatemcp-internal as a private repo and mirrors the upstream into it. If you have the GitHub CLI (gh) signed in, it's used automatically; otherwise it tells you exactly where to get a GitHub token and prompts you to paste it — the same "paste a credential" flow as setting up a network. Re-run with --sync to refresh against new releases.

Then, with org-admin access, in Cowork: Organization settings → Plugins → Add plugin → GitHub → enter <you>/affiliatemcp-internal → install affiliate-networks-mcp from the synced marketplace.