MCP / Codex
Connect Manycrawl to Codex
One button in the app writes the config for you, the same way it does for Claude. There is no terminal step and nothing to install — Codex speaks HTTP to the bridge the app already runs.
Step 1Open the app and sign in
The desktop app is the engine, so it has to be running. Opening it also starts the local bridge on port 8765 and the scraper sidecar on 8766 — you do not run those yourself, and you do not need Node installed. The app ships its own.
If you have logged into Apollo or Facebook in its built-in browser, those sources are available to Codex too, because it is still your browser doing the fetching.
Step 2Click Connect Codex
In the app: Settings → Connect Codex → Connect. The badge turns to Connected.
That one click adds a manycrawl server to ~/.codex/config.toml, pointing at the same endpoint Claude and Cursor use:
[mcp_servers.manycrawl] url = "http://127.0.0.1:8765/mcp"
Two lines, and nothing else in the file is touched. It is a text edit rather than a re-save: config.toml commonly holds bearer tokens for other MCP servers, so the file keeps its permissions and a .manycrawl.bak copy is taken first. Disconnect on the same card takes the entry back out. Restart Codex after connecting — it reads the file at startup.
Step 3Ask for a list
Say the word Manycrawl in the request:
"Use Manycrawl to find 50 dentists in Ljubljana and get their emails."
Naming it matters. Without it Codex may answer from a web search instead — which returns names but rarely phone numbers or emails, and leaves no table behind in the app.
Codex will ask before it runs each Manycrawl tool. Approve it. We deliberately do not write an auto-approve mode into your config: the same switch that would wave through create_source would wave through delete_table.
CheckIs it working?
Ask Codex to call manycrawl_engine_status. A healthy answer looks like this:
{
"bridge": true,
"dashboardAlive": true,
"engine": { "desktop": true, "authenticated": true, "isPro": true }
}
Leave the app running and signed in while you work. You do not have to keep the window in front of you — closing it hides the app to the tray and it keeps serving. Quitting it properly stops the bridge, and Codex loses the server until you open the app again.
The other directionCodex can also do the thinking
Connecting is one half. The other is that an AI column in the app can send its work to Codex: pick Codex (local agent) as the column's model and each row is answered by the CLI on your machine, on your ChatGPT plan, with no API key and no per-token bill.
The card shows the two states separately, because they fail independently — the badge is whether Codex can reach the app, and the line under it is whether the CLI is logged in. If columns sit unanswered while the badge still says Connected, it is the second one: run codex login in a terminal and hit Re-check. More on Codex as a model.
FAQWhen it does not work
Where does Codex itself come from?
The CLI ships inside the ChatGPT desktop app, and is also installable on its own through npm or Homebrew. The app looks for it rather than requiring a path from you, and a miss is not cached — install Codex while Manycrawl is running and the next Re-check finds it.
Why not just run codex mcp add?
Because of what it does to the rest of the file. Measured on 11 September 2026: it rewrites every [mcp_servers.*] table in the config, not only ours. If you keep other servers in there, hand-tuned, that is not a safe thing for one button to do. The app edits the text of our own table instead and leaves every other line exactly as it found it.
It does still consult Codex afterwards. When the CLI is on the machine, the app runs codex mcp get manycrawl --json and lets Codex's own parser be the authority on whether the file loads — and if it does not, the original file goes back.
The card says Connected but Codex does not see the tools
Restart Codex. It reads config.toml at startup, so an entry added while it was open is not picked up until then.
bridge: false
Nothing is answering on port 8765. Usually the app is not running — open it and it starts the bridge. If the app is running and you still see this, something else on your machine is holding 8765; quit that and restart the app.
authenticated: false
The app is running but signed out. Sign in and the tools start working immediately; nothing needs restarting. This is the Manycrawl account, and it is a different thing from being logged into Codex.
Can I connect Codex and Claude at the same time?
Yes. They are separate clients pointing at the same bridge, and it serves both. What you must not do is configure one client twice — an HTTP entry and a stdio entry together expose every tool in duplicate.
Can I use this from a cloud agent?
No. The endpoint is 127.0.0.1, so it is only reachable from the machine running the app. That is deliberate, and it is the same property that keeps the whole thing off anybody's meter but yours.
Does the agent spend my actions?
Yes, at the same rate as clicking Run yourself: one action per row processed. Creating a source and adding a column through MCP costs exactly what it costs in the app.