Affiliate Networks MCP

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.

Prefer to edit Claude Desktop config by hand?

Open the Claude Desktop config file at:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

Add the affiliate entry inside mcpServers — keep any siblings:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "affiliate": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["affiliate-networks-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop after saving.

For another local stdio MCP client, configure the server command npx -y affiliate-networks-mcp. These clients are compatible in principle, not yet tested first-party journeys. Draft PR #49 is the existing VS Code/Copilot installer candidate.

Client support states

These labels describe the onboarding journey, not whether every network adapter is live-verified. "Tested" means repository-owned automated validation, not live proof against every host version. See REPORT.md for maturity.

Check it worked. In a new Claude conversation, ask "What affiliate networks do you have access to?" — you should see every network you configured. If you registered any brands, also try "list my brands".

To disconnect later: npx affiliate-networks-mcp uninstall, or claude plugin uninstall affiliate-networks-mcp for the plugin path.

Anonymous telemetry

The project reads aggregate npm and GitHub adoption statistics. npm downloads are downloads, not users: they include repeated npx runs, CI, caches, and other automated traffic.

Optional runtime telemetry is explicitly opt-in and sent at most once per active day. It contains package version, launch surface, a random identifier that rotates monthly, and counts by network, operation, and coarse outcome. See the privacy policy for the exact contract.

affiliate-networks-mcp telemetry status
affiliate-networks-mcp telemetry enable
affiliate-networks-mcp telemetry disable

Troubleshooting install

"Unknown skill: plugin" in a Claude session. The /plugin syntax is a shell command, not a chat slash command. Run claude plugin marketplace add ... from your terminal, not inside the conversation.

Cowork rejects the marketplace repo. Confirm the repo is private. Public repos are blocked for org-marketplace sync. Run npx affiliate-networks-mcp cowork-mirror to create a private mirror.

What affiliate networks… returns nothing. The MCP server is loaded but credentials are missing. Trigger the bundled affiliate-network-setup-help skill (ask "help me set up my affiliate network credentials") or run npx affiliate-networks-mcp setup in a terminal.

Stale npm cache. npx --yes affiliate-networks-mcp@latest forces a fresh fetch. Verify the published version with npm view affiliate-networks-mcp version.

What you can ask

The packaged skills are pre-written conversation patterns. You don't need to invoke them — Claude picks the right one based on what you type.

Publisher side

• "What did I earn last month?" — consolidated earnings report across every publisher network, split by status (pending, approved, paid, reversed), with anything unpaid >90 days flagged.
• "Are all my affiliate networks healthy?" — one-shot auth and capability check.
• "Help me set up Awin" (or CJ, Impact, Rakuten) — guided credential setup with dashboard menu paths quoted verbatim.
• "Audit the affiliate links in my sitemap at https://mysite.com/sitemap.xml" — reads the sitemap, classifies every affiliate link by network, and flags the dead or declined ones. URLs, HTML, or markdown also accepted directly.

Brand side

• "How is Acme performing this quarter?" — single-brand report across that brand's bound networks. Top publishers, status splits, period-over-period delta.
• "Show me revenue across all my clients this week." — portfolio rollup, brand-aggregated, with a "needs attention" subsection for brands trending down.
• "Any anomalies in the affiliate data this week?" — week-over-week scan for revenue drops, reversal spikes, top-10 dropouts, dead programmes. Designed to run on a schedule via Claude's own scheduling.
• "Set up Acme's strategy and KPIs" — bind the brand during setup, record advisory context with client-onboarding, then reports, anomaly watches, and portfolio rollups use it to frame verdicts. It never authorises a network write or changes the figures.

Networks

The repository currently ships 86 adapters across 72 network families. The breadth is real, but maturity varies; most adapters are experimental. Check the table below and REPORT.md before relying on one for production work.