Palisade

What palisade MCP server does

The palisade MCP server exposes Palisade's email authentication service to MCP-compatible clients. It covers domain-level checks and management for SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MTA-STS, and BIMI, along with related account, task, reporting, billing, webhook, group, and DNS-connection operations.

Signed-in operations apply to the organization selected during OAuth authentication. Public DNS inspection is available without a Palisade account through a separate endpoint. That public route provides audit_domain, which evaluates a domain's authentication posture, and validate_spf_include, which checks an SPF include against the ten-lookup limit.

How it works

The hosted service runs at https://api.palisade.email/mcp over Streamable HTTP. The npm package is a local stdio adapter built around mcp-remote, allowing stdio-oriented clients to connect without implementing the remote transport themselves.

Running the package opens a browser for OAuth sign-in. You choose an organization, and the bridge retains a token limited by that organization and the user's role. The authorization flow uses Palisade's public OAuth client; API keys are not accepted by the MCP endpoint. The local callback defaults to port 8765, which must be available and registered with the authorization service.

Clients that support Streamable HTTP can connect to the hosted endpoint directly. The public endpoint at /mcp/public does not open a browser or require a token, but its calls are throttled by client address. The package can be pointed at that endpoint for stdio-only clients.

Setup and configuration

For a stdio client, run:

npx -y @palisadeemail/mcp

A typical client entry uses npx as the command and -y @palisadeemail/mcp as its arguments. Codex can register the same command with codex mcp add. Claude Code can skip the bridge and connect to the remote endpoint using HTTP, the supplied OAuth client ID, and callback port 8765.

The bridge supports three optional environment variables. PALISADE_MCP_URL changes the endpoint, PALISADE_MCP_CLIENT_ID changes the OAuth client ID, and PALISADE_MCP_CALLBACK_PORT changes the callback port. The replacement port must also be known to the authorization server. Set the URL to https://api.palisade.email/mcp/public to use only public DNS tools without authentication.

Tools and capabilities

Available operations include:

• Inspecting accounts, domains, live DNS, SPF diagnostics, DNS records, and domain remediation plans.
• Creating, updating, verifying, and deleting domains, groups, hosted DMARC, and MTA-STS configuration.
• Listing, completing, and dismissing remediation tasks.
• Reviewing DMARC aggregate summaries and sender-level source breakdowns.
• Managing subscriptions, checkout, billing portals, webhook endpoints, webhook events, and activity logs.
• Creating prospecting reports for up to ten domains, returning a hosted PDF link, and managing those reports.
• Reviewing DNS provider connections and whether Palisade can publish records for a domain.

Palisade returns the DNS records to publish, but the actual changes are made at the DNS provider hosting the domain unless a supported DNS connection can publish them. Webhooks can be used instead of polling for long-running state changes. A webhook signing secret is returned only when the endpoint is created, so it must be stored at that time.

Limitations and notes

The palisade MCP server scopes organization data and write operations to the authenticated organization. audit_domain, validate_spf_include, and prospecting reports use domain names and public DNS instead of an account domain ID. Each domain in a prospecting report consumes the same live-DNS budget as an individual audit.

A connection that exposes only authenticate and complete_authentication has not completed browser sign-in. Complete the OAuth flow before expecting Palisade's tools. If another configuration with the same server name is active, inspect the effective client entry; Claude Code scope can cause a different entry to win.

API-key authentication and dynamically registered OAuth clients are refused by the MCP endpoint. Payment actions open Stripe-hosted pages, and SPF validation is constrained by the DNS protocol's ten-lookup limit.