HN Showcase
Back to browse
Joey – MCP client that runs on your phone

Joey – MCP client that runs on your phone

by benkaiser·Mar 1, 2026·2 points·0 comments
Visit ProjectView on HN

AI Analysis

●●●BangerShip ItSolve My ProblemZero to One

First mobile MCP client: full agentic loop on phone without subscription or proxy server.

Strengths
  • •True gap in market: first native mobile client for MCP protocol with real agentic loop (tool execution + feedback)—timing aligns with MCP adoption wave
  • •Privacy architecture is genuine: on-device storage, no proxy, tokens stay on phone—differentiator vs ChatGPT app or Claude iOS
  • •Full feature completeness: MCP sampling, elicitation, OAuth, session resumption, Mermaid rendering, multi-model switching—not a MVP
Weaknesses
  • •Adoption depends entirely on MCP ecosystem maturation; if MCP remains enterprise-focused, consumer use case evaporates
  • •FSL-1.1-MIT license restricts commercial use after trial period, may slow adoption vs MIT or Apache
Category
AI/ML
Target Audience

Mobile users who want AI with tool access; MCP ecosystem participants; privacy-conscious AI consumers

Similar To

Claude iOS · ChatGPT app · OpenRouter web interface

Post Description

Hi HN,

I’ve been watching the rise of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) with interest. While it’s gaining traction in the enterprise space for internal tools and databases, I’m convinced we’re heading toward a future where consumers will interact with all sorts of remote services via MCP. The problem I hit was that while the ecosystem is growing, there wasn't a great way to use remote MCP servers from a mobile device without a monthly subscription. I wanted a high-quality native experience on my phone that I actually owned, so I built Joey.

Joey is a mobile-first AI chat client that connects to any model via OpenRouter and supports remote MCP servers over HTTP. It handles the full agentic loop, including many MCP features like sampling, elicitation, and OAuth. All your OAuth tokens and history stay on your device since there is no middle-man proxy server, and I collect no telemetry.

The project is source-available under the FSL-1.1-MIT license. Since it is a standard Flutter app, it is easy to build it yourself and deploy to your own device if you have the SDK installed. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the future of consumer MCP and how we'll be managing these tools on the go.

GitHub: https://github.com/benkaiser/joey-mcp-client

Similar Projects