Overview
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that lets AI agents and automations call external tools. C21 Live Control ships an MCP server that wraps a curated subset of the REST API as a catalogue of tools an MCP-compatible client can invoke.
The point is not to replace the REST API. The point is to let an operator say "start the news stream and alert me if it does not reach Live state in 30 seconds" and have a connected agent decompose that into the right sequence of tool calls. Every MCP call goes through the same audit, the same authorisation and the same idempotency guarantees as the equivalent REST call.
What MCP is
MCP defines how a client (the agent or automation) and a server (Live Control) negotiate a list of available tools and how the client calls those tools with structured arguments. The Live Control server exposes two tool layers: four curated business-workflow tools (snake_case) and an autogenerated CRUD wrapper per public REST operation (camelCase, named after the OpenAPI operationId). See Tools for the catalogue.
Profiles
The toolset visible to a connected client is bounded by a server-side profile that ships with the Live Control MCP server. Check with your administrator to confirm which profile is active.
| Profile | Typical use | Surface |
|---|---|---|
voice | Recommended for NOC operator deployments. Curated set of read + business-workflow tools covering the most common operator interactions. Select this profile explicitly at deploy time (TOOL_PROFILE=voice) — the server default is full. | Live stream status queries, start / stop, runtime operations (logo, blackout, toggle Destinations), Destination group read and edit, Schedule CRUD, Asset discovery and basic source reconfiguration. The effective subset depends on the server build — some legacy operations in the allowlist may not resolve against the current API; check with your administrator if a documented tool is missing. |
readonly | Observability or auditing agents that must never mutate state. | Every list / read tool; no mutations. |
operator | Configuration agents (Cursor, Claude) that need to create / edit but not delete. | Read + mutations (POST, PUT, PATCH) on any public resource; DELETE operations are blocked. |
full | Administrative agents and integration test harnesses. This is the server default when TOOL_PROFILE is not set. | The full public surface, including Channel / Encoding / Destination CRUD, Integrations and DELETE. |
The active profile is configured at deployment time; the tool catalogue advertised on connect reflects the profile.
Authentication
The MCP server authenticates with the same API tokens documented under API → Authentication. The token is passed in the standard bearer header:
Authorization: Bearer <YOUR_API_TOKEN>
The token authenticates as the user it was issued to and inherits that user's role. The token's role gates the API operations the call resolves to; the active MCP profile gates the tools the client can see in the first place. Both checks apply.
Audit
Every MCP call is associated with the user whose token was used and is recorded in the same audit surface as the equivalent REST call. The request id (X-Request-Id) is shared across the two surfaces so cross-surface correlation works.