prime-intellect-mcp

Let Claude Code rent, drive, and terminate Prime Intellect GPU pods on its own — with hard spend caps you control.

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What this is

An MCP server that connects Claude Code (or any MCP client) to your Prime Intellect account. With it, the agent can:

• 🔍 Find the cheapest GPU pod that matches your requirements
• 💸 Quote a price before committing money
• 🛒 Provision the pod (only after you say confirm=True)
• 🖥️ SSH into it (the connection string is handed to the agent's own Bash tool)
• 🛑 Terminate it when work is done — and warn loudly if you forget

Built for one workflow: telling Claude "rent the cheapest H100, run my training script, then kill it" and not waking up to a $400 bill.

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Install in 60 seconds

You only need this much to start renting GPUs through Claude Code:

1. Get a Prime Intellect API key

Click here to generate one → set permissions:

Scope	Level
Instances	Read and write
Availability	Read only
Billing	Read only
SSH Keys	Read only

Copy the key — it starts with pit_….

2. Add the server to Claude Code

Open ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS) or your project's .mcp.json, and paste:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "prime-intellect": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["prime-intellect-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "PRIME_API_KEY": "pit_PASTE_YOURS_HERE",
        "PRIME_MAX_HOURLY_USD": "5",
        "PRIME_MAX_TOTAL_USD": "40"
      }
    }
  }
}

That's it. Restart Claude Code and ask: "What GPUs are available right now under $1/hr?"

Don't have uvx? Install it with curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh (or brew install uv). It's a one-liner installer for the uv package manager and you'll never have to manage a virtualenv again.

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✨ Add SSH (optional, +2 min) — needed for Claude to actually run code on the pod

The server above can already provision/inspect/terminate pods. But to have Claude Code SSH into a running pod and execute commands on it, Prime Intellect needs to know your machine's public SSH key.

3. Find or generate an SSH key on your machine

ls ~/.ssh/*.pub          # if you have id_ed25519.pub or similar, you're set
# otherwise:
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "you@example.com"   # press Enter through the prompts

4. Register the public key with Prime Intellect

cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub    # or whichever .pub file you have

Copy the output (one line starting with ssh-ed25519 …), then paste it into the Add SSH key form at app.primeintellect.ai/dashboard/ssh-keys.

That's it. Future pods will have your public key in authorized_keys, and Claude Code's Bash tool can SSH straight in:

ssh ubuntu@<pod-ip-from-pod_status> "nvidia-smi"

Coming in v0.2: a register_ssh_key MCP tool that does step 4 from inside Claude (no browser visit). See the issue tracker to follow along.

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What Claude can now do (the 9 tools)

Tool	Use case
list_gpu_types	"What GPU types does Prime Intellect offer?"
list_availability	"Show me 1×H100 pods available under $3/hr."
get_wallet_balance	"How much credit do I have left?"
pod_quote	"Quote me a 1×A100 with 200GB disk." (no charge)
pod_create	"Provision the pod from that quote." (requires confirm=True)
pod_list	"Show me my running pods."
pod_status	"Is pod X ready? Wait until it has SSH info."
pod_terminate	"Kill pod X." (requires confirm=True)
pod_check_runaway	"Did I forget to terminate anything?"

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Safety: nothing provisions silently

Three layers, in order:

1. Quote first. pod_quote returns a price + a 60-second token. No side effects. The dollar amount is now in the agent's context.
2. Explicit confirm. pod_create (and pod_terminate) requires confirm=True. Without it, you get a dry-run preview.
3. Hard env-var caps. PRIME_MAX_HOURLY_USD blocks any pod above the rate. PRIME_MAX_TOTAL_USD blocks any (rate × max_lifetime_hours) above the budget. Wallet balance is also enforced. None of these caps can be overridden by tool arguments — they're read at every call.

Defaults: PRIME_MAX_HOURLY_USD=5, PRIME_MAX_TOTAL_USD=40. Set them in your config's env block.

Every pod_create / pod_terminate is appended as JSON to ~/.prime-intellect-mcp/audit.log, so you have a complete history of what the agent did with your money.

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Example prompts (paste these into Claude Code)

List the cheapest 1×H100 pods available right now. Show me the top 3 by hourly price.

Quote a 1×A100 80GB with 100GB disk, 8 vCPU, 64GB RAM. Don't provision yet —
just show me what it would cost.

I need to fine-tune a 7B model overnight. Find the cheapest 1×H100 with 200GB
disk, max $40 total budget, max 12 hours. Provision it, give me the SSH command,
and remind me to terminate when I'm done.

Check if I have any running pods I forgot about and show me their hourly cost.

Terminate pod abc123. Confirm before doing it.

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Troubleshooting

<details> <summary><b><code>PRIME_API_KEY is not set</code></b></summary>

Either your Claude Code config didn't pick up the env block, or you typed PRIME_API_KEY as a different variable. Verify with:

$ env | grep PRIME

inside the same shell that launches Claude Code, or paste the key directly into the JSON env block (instead of using ${PRIME_API_KEY}). </details>

<details> <summary><b><code>Hourly rate $X/hr exceeds PRIME_MAX_HOURLY_USD cap</code></b></summary>

The agent picked a pod above your hard cap. Either:

• Pick a cheaper GPU (list_availability with a region filter often surfaces cheaper community-priced rows), or
• Raise PRIME_MAX_HOURLY_USD in your config and restart Claude Code. </details>

<details> <summary><b><code>Quote token expired</code></b></summary>

Quotes live 60 seconds; the agent waited too long between pod_quote and pod_create. Just call pod_quote again — it's a no-op cost-wise. </details>

<details> <summary><b>Pod is "ACTIVE" but <code>ssh_connection</code> is null</b></summary>

Provisioning isn't fully done. The pod is alive but still running its install script. Call pod_status(pod_id, wait_for_ssh=True) and it will block (polling every 5s) until SSH comes up. </details>

<details> <summary><b><code>ssh: Permission denied (publickey)</code></b></summary>

You haven't told Prime Intellect about your public key (or the pod was provisioned before you registered it). Fix:

1. Verify your pubkey is registered at app.primeintellect.ai/dashboard/ssh-keys.
2. Re-provision — the pod's authorized_keys is set at create time, so existing pods won't pick up keys you registered after.
3. If your private key has a passphrase, run ssh-add --apple-use-keychain ~/.ssh/your_key once on macOS so the agent unlocks it silently from now on. </details>

<details> <summary><b>Wallet balance is empty / <code>PaymentRequiredError</code></b></summary>

Top up at app.primeintellect.ai/wallet and try again. </details>

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Why another one?

There's a prime-mcp-server 0.1.2 on PyPI. It's a thin proof-of-concept; this isn't a fork. Differences for unattended overnight use:

	prime-intellect-mcp	prime-mcp-server 0.1.2
Two-step quote → confirm	✅	❌
Env-var hard spend caps	✅	❌
Wallet pre-check	✅	❌
Runaway-pod detection	✅	❌
SSH handoff to agent	✅	❌
Tests	32 unit + opt-in live	None

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Local development

git clone https://github.com/kvrancic/prime-intellect-mcp
cd prime-intellect-mcp
uv sync
uv run pytest -m "not live"        # 32 fast tests, no network, no spend
uv run ruff check .
uv run mypy src

Live smoke test (provisions cheapest available GPU, runs nvidia-smi, terminates; ~$0.05 spend):

PRIME_API_KEY=pit_... PRIME_LIVE_TEST=1 PRIME_LIVE_MAX_HOURLY=0.60 \
PRIME_MAX_HOURLY_USD=0.60 PRIME_MAX_TOTAL_USD=2.00 \
uv run pytest tests/test_smoke_live.py -v -s

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Roadmap

• v0.2 — register_ssh_key MCP tool (kill the dashboard step), Sandboxes (prime-sandboxes SDK), Environments Hub
• v0.3 — Optional auto-terminate daemon (server-side enforcement of max_lifetime_hours); cost telemetry
• v1.0+ — Hosted/OAuth deployment when Prime Intellect ships OAuth; submission to Anthropic connector directory

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Acknowledgements

• Prime Intellect for the prime Python SDK that does 90% of the work
• MIT 6.8610 (Advanced NLP) for the Prime Intellect credits that made testing this possible
• Anthropic for MCP
• FastMCP for the framework

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome. Please run uv run pytest -m "not live" and uv run ruff check . before submitting.