Built in context

In September 2023, right before Symphony V1 shipped, I tweeted this: "after V1 launches… the next phase of @symphony will be about built in context."

I'm not sure anybody knew what I meant. I'm not sure I fully did either. What I knew was that V1 could run your ads, and everything that made those ads work lived somewhere else. The release date was in a manager's calendar. The fan list was a CSV from the merch store. The software never knew what the team knew.

Three years later, that context is the product. Maestro, Simmy, Cue, Echo, Maude and Sage share one memory of every artist. Today we're taking that context outside our app. The SymphonyOS MCP is out, so Symphony can work inside Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Claude and any other assistant that speaks MCP.

What MCP is

MCP stands for Model Context Protocol. It's an open standard for how an AI assistant talks to outside software.

An MCP server is basically a menu your assistant can read. Each item is a tool, with a short note on what it does. You ask a question, your assistant picks the tools that fit, uses them, and answers with your real numbers instead of a guess. One server works with every assistant that speaks the protocol.

Before MCP, every AI app needed its own custom connection to every piece of software. Now a company builds one server and it shows up everywhere.

How it caught on

Anthropic open sourced MCP on November 25, 2024. Then it spread fast. In March 2025 Sam Altman said OpenAI would support it across its products. In April Demis Hassabis said Google would bring it to Gemini. In May Microsoft and GitHub signed on at Build. Last December Anthropic gave MCP to the new Agentic AI Foundation at the Linux Foundation, which it co-founded with OpenAI and Block. By then there were more than 10,000 active MCP servers.

Most people never saw any of that news, and that's fine. What it means day to day is that the assistant you like isn't a dead end anymore. You don't have to learn one more dashboard. You stay where you already are and the software shows up there.

What's in it

Ours has 300+ tools, covering pretty much everything you can do in Symphony.

Ads. Build, review, pause and set budgets on Meta, TikTok and YouTube campaigns. Your assistant can set targeting, build lookalike audiences, read the changes Autopilot wants to make and ask whether a campaign actually moved the music.

Creators. Find creators already posting with your sound, check whether their views are real, write the brief, send outreach you approve, track the posts and build the payout sheet. Sage's creator campaigns are live on TikTok and Instagram.

Fans. Search and tag your fan list, draft email and text campaigns, send yourself a preview and see your fanbase city by city.

Pages and releases. Build artist sites, link pages and presaves, and keep your releases in order.

Streams, sounds and catalog. Track songs, import a whole Spotify catalog, follow TikTok sounds, check playlist adds and read an artist's weekly pulse.

Memory. Read what Symphony's agents have learned about an artist, then pin it, correct it or have them forget it, in your own words.

Projects and assets. Put a release or tour into one project with a budget, share the report, and search your asset library.

Your assistant only sees the artists and workspaces you already have access to.

What still waits for you

Anything that spends money or messages fans waits for your explicit yes. So your assistant can build a whole campaign or write the whole fan email, and nothing goes out until you say so. You sign in with your Symphony account, or make a personal token in the app that expires after 90 days and that you can revoke any time.

Where it runs

The part I'm most excited about is local agents. A lot of people now run an agent right on their own laptop, in Claude Code, Codex or Cursor, with their files and notes sitting right there. Plug Symphony in and that agent can look at your streams next to the tour budget in your downloads folder, without you copying anything between tabs.

If your agent already lives in your terminal or your editor, Symphony moves in next to it.

In Claude Code it's one line: claude mcp add --transport http symphony https://labelos.symphonyos.co/api/mcp

Cursor has a one-click install, Codex takes a few lines of config, and Claude, Claude Desktop and VS Code work too. Anything else that speaks MCP can connect through the same address. If you want help getting set up, book a demo at symphonyos.co/demo and we'll walk you through it.

Back to that tweet

When I wrote it, I thought built in context meant Symphony knowing more about your artist. It does. It also means Symphony showing up wherever you already work, in an artist's own assistant or on a manager's laptop, so the context goes with you. Some independent artists are already running it that way.

If you plug it in, tell me what you want it to do next. I read everything.

Cheers, Chuka