agent-crm

A small CRM your AI agent can work. It exposes an MCP endpoint so an agent can search contacts, run the call queue, log calls and move deals, without being able to delete anything or send email. A plain web app shows you everything it did.

FastAPI, sqlite, Jinja2, Docker. One container, one database file, no external services.

Status: pre-1.0. The MCP tool set and the schema may change between releases. Back up data/crm.db before upgrading.

Who it's for

A good fit if you are one person (a solo consultant, a small clinic, a tradie) who sells through calls and follow-ups, and you want an agent to do the CRM busywork while you keep a clear view of the pipeline.

Not a fit if you need multiple users with roles and permissions, email sent and received inside the CRM, reports and dashboards, or a native mobile app. These are left out on purpose; see docs/SCOPE.md.

Related MCP server: Follow Up Boss MCP Server

Quick start

For trying it out. docker-compose.yml is a development setup with live reload; see Production for a real deployment.

git clone https://github.com/sevasek/agent-crm.git && cd agent-crm
cp .env.example .env
docker compose up --build -d
docker compose exec app python scripts/create_admin.py you@example.com "Your Name"
docker compose exec app python scripts/seed_services.py   # optional example services

Open http://localhost:8000 and log in.

Connect an agent

Generate a key, put it in .env as CRM_MCP_API_KEY, and recreate the container (a plain restart does not reload .env):

python -c "import secrets; print(secrets.token_hex(32))"
docker compose up -d

Then point any MCP client at http://localhost:8000/mcp (Streamable HTTP) with Authorization: Bearer <key>. Check it works:

curl -sS http://localhost:8000/mcp \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "Accept: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CRM_MCP_API_KEY" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list"}'

An agent can search contacts (search_partners), pull today's queue (get_call_queue), log what happened (record_call_outcome, log_activity), and move deals (set_deal_stage). It cannot delete records, send email, manage users, or reshape the pipeline. Tools tell the agent to search before it creates, and updates fill empty fields instead of overwriting yours.

Hosted connectors that need OAuth 2.1 with PKCE can use /oauth/authorize. Full tool list, auth and limits: docs/MCP.md.

What's inside

• Companies and people in one table; people link to their company.

• Deals on a pipeline you define: stage names, order and roles are data.

• A next action and date on every deal, with due and overdue flags and a daily check that logs each due follow-up on the contact's timeline.

• A daily call list ranked out of 100 by a fixed formula you can read (deal value, source, contact completeness, recency).

• A phone-first call view with tap-to-call, the offer to pitch, and one-tap outcomes.

• Weighted fit rules, a service catalogue and priced offers you configure.

• Lead ingest over an API or CLI, with duplicate matching.

• Tags on deals (a campaign, a region, anything else you want to filter by), set from the deals page or from the agent.

• Follow-on (post-sale) work is another deal linked with parent_deal_id, plus delegated tasks — not a separate fulfilment module.

• Delegated tasks to hand work to another agent or a person, with an optional webhook.

• An optional webhook when a deal enters a nurture stage.

• An optional webhook when a deal is won, for invoice hand-off.

It starts empty apart from a starter pipeline: services, offers and fit rules are yours to define. Judgement lives in your agent, not in the CRM; scores are plain formulas, not a model.

Production

docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d --build

Standing up a separate client (its own database, secrets, admin, and domain) is docs/CLIENT_DEPLOY.md. The app binds to 127.0.0.1:${CRM_PORT:-8000} (default 8000). Put a TLS-terminating reverse proxy in front and forward everything, including /mcp and /oauth/*. Working Caddy and nginx configs, header forwarding, and TRUSTED_PROXIES notes are in docs/DEPLOY.md. In .env:

• SECRET_KEY: a real one, not the placeholder.

• SECURE_COOKIES=true and BASE_URL=https://your.domain.

• TRUSTED_PROXIES: your proxy's IP, a CIDR (e.g. the compose network 172.18.0.0/16), or a hostname, so rate limits use the real client IP.

• TZ: decides what "today" means for follow-ups.

• CRM_PORT and COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME: set these when more than one instance shares a host (see Multiple instances on one host).

Security defaults: login uses expiring session cookies with CSRF protection; login and API endpoints are rate limited (failed auth is counted per IP; authenticated MCP/API traffic has a larger per-key bucket); the lead-ingest, stages and MCP keys are separate, and each endpoint refuses all requests until its key is set. Set BOOTSTRAP_ADMIN_EMAIL and BOOTSTRAP_ADMIN_PASSWORD_FILE (preferred; wins over BOOTSTRAP_ADMIN_PASSWORD) once to create the first admin without shell access — the file is not visible in docker inspect. /health checks that sqlite is writable and returns 503 if it is not, and also 503s ({"status": "low_disk_space"}) once free space on the DB's filesystem drops below HEALTH_MIN_FREE_MB (default 200), ahead of an actual write failure.

The staleness-cron service runs the follow-up check on start and daily at 08:00.

Production compose rotates json-file logs at 10 MB × 5 files and caps the app at 256 MB RAM. docker stop / docker kill leave the container stopped under restart: unless-stopped — a maintenance stop is not a crash, so start it again with docker compose ... up -d when you are done.

Once a v* tag exists, you can run a published multi-arch image instead of building from the working copy (build: . stays the default). How to cut the first tag (v0.1.0) and what the workflow publishes: docs/RELEASE.md.

# compose override (a third -f file, or docker-compose.override.yml)
services:
  app:
    image: ghcr.io/sevasek/agent-crm:vX.Y.Z
    build: !reset
    pull_policy: always
  staleness-cron:
    image: ghcr.io/sevasek/agent-crm:vX.Y.Z
    build: !reset
    pull_policy: always

Then docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d (no --build) so Compose pulls the published image instead of building locally.

See CHANGELOG.md for what changed between tags.

Backup, restore and upgrade

All data is one sqlite file, ./data/crm.db, in WAL mode. Do not cp it while the app runs: you can copy a torn database. Use the shipped online-backup script (sqlite's backup API, safe under load; files are mode 0600 and land in ./backups/, not ./data/):

./scripts/backup.sh

It prefers host Python against the bind-mounted file, and falls back to docker compose exec if the database is only reachable inside the container. It verifies PRAGMA integrity_check and prunes snapshots older than BACKUP_KEEP_DAYS (default 14).

Nothing leaves the host until you set an off-host hook — pick one:

# restic / any command; the backup path is appended (or substitute {})
export BACKUP_REMOTE_CMD='restic -r s3:s3.amazonaws.com/your-bucket backup'
# or rclone
export BACKUP_RCLONE_DEST='remote:crm-backups'
# or aws s3
export BACKUP_S3_URI='s3://your-bucket/crm'

Do not put cloud credentials in CI; these are operator-only. Install a schedule from the examples (not just this README):

• scripts/backup.cron.example — crontab / /etc/cron.d

• scripts/crm-backup.service.example + scripts/crm-backup.timer.example — systemd, 03:00

Restore (stops the stack, drops WAL/SHM, copies the snapshot, starts):

./scripts/restore.sh backups/crm-YYYY-MM-DDTHHMMSSZ.db

The entrypoint repairs ownership of ./data on first boot when it can traverse the volume; later restarts skip that step so cap_drop: ALL survives a restart. If start fails on an unreadable bind-mount, chown the host ./data to APP_UID (see docs/DEPLOY.md). Check docker compose ps shows healthy and you can log in.

Optional sub-minute RPO: run Litestream beside the app to replicate data/crm.db to S3/GCS. It is not bundled and not required.

Upgrade: take a backup (./scripts/backup.sh), then git pull and re-run the up -d --build command above. init_db() stores PRAGMA user_version and applies numbered additive migrations inside a transaction. A process holding an exclusive migrate lock (file lock + BEGIN IMMEDIATE) is the only one that migrates, so app and staleness-cron cannot race. If the on-disk version is newer than this code, startup refuses with a clear error — an older container will not mutate a newer schema. An online backup is taken automatically before any migration of an existing database (backups/pre-migrate-vN-to-vM-*.db). Schema v2 adds deal_tags and, once, copies any external_ref that is a campaign: slug onto a tag (the ref is left unchanged; later startups do not restore a removed tag).

To roll back: down, check out the previous version (or previous image), and restore the pre-migrate backup. Serving a published GHCR image shrinks the outage to a container swap instead of a rebuild.

Multiple instances on one host

scripts/new-instance.sh NAME TZ EMAIL allocates the next free CRM_PORT (from instances/ports.tsv, starting at 8000), writes a mode-600 instances/$NAME/.env with fresh secrets.token_hex(32) values, sets COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME=crm-$NAME, starts the stack with docker-compose.port.yml + docker-compose.instance.yml, waits for /health, creates the admin via create_admin.py (one-time password printed once — BOOTSTRAP_ADMIN_PASSWORD is not left in the env), and prints a Caddy site block.

CRM_PORT is interpolated as 127.0.0.1:${CRM_PORT:-8000}:8000. COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME keeps container and network names from colliding when two instances share a host. TRUSTED_PROXIES is set to the compose network CIDR (172.16.0.0/12). Use --dry-run to generate the env without Docker.

Backup and restore default to ./data/crm.db and the default compose project. For an instance, point them at that instance or they will copy or down the wrong stack:

export CRM_DB_PATH=instances/acme/data/crm.db
export COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME=crm-acme
export CRM_ENV_FILE=instances/acme/.env
export BACKUP_DIR=instances/acme/backups
./scripts/backup.sh
./scripts/restore.sh instances/acme/backups/crm-YYYY-MM-DDTHHMMSSZ.db

Ingest leads

POST /api/v1/leads with X-API-Key: $CRM_API_KEY (header only), or from the CLI:

python scripts/inject_leads.py --dry-run tests/fixtures/leads/example.json
python scripts/inject_leads.py tests/fixtures/leads/example.json

service_slug must already exist in your catalogue. Field meanings and matching rules are in docs/DATA_MODEL.md. To load contacts from markdown files, see scripts/import_clients.py.

Docs

SCOPE.md what's in and out and why · DATA_MODEL.md entities, schema and ingest rules · MCP.md the agent interface · CLIENT_DEPLOY.md new client instance on a VPS · DEPLOY.md reverse proxy and TLS · OFFBOARDING.md removing a cancelled customer's instance · RELEASE.md how to cut a version tag · UI_UPGRADE_PLAN.md pre-launch UI phases

docs/*.md also builds into a static manual site, styled with the app's own app/static/style.css and Pico.css so it looks like the app. This is a doc-build-time tool only — it needs Node, but the app itself never does (see docs/UI_UPGRADE_PLAN.md); nothing it adds (node_modules/, package.json, eleventy.config.js, _site/) is in the Docker image.

npm ci
npm run docs:build   # writes ./_site
npm run docs:serve   # live-reload at http://localhost:8080
npm run docs:test    # build + smoke-check the output

Contributing

Planned work, known gaps and deferred ideas are tracked in GitHub Issues; there is no separate TODO file. The scope is deliberately narrow, so please open an issue to discuss a feature before sending a pull request. Bug fixes are welcome directly. Run the tests first:

pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
python -m pytest tests/ -q

Support and security

Questions and bugs: open an issue. To report a vulnerability, use the private security report form rather than a public issue (see SECURITY.md).

Want it run for you? Managed hosting is $60 AUD per month and includes secure hosting, backups, 99.9% uptime, new features deployed frequently, and responsive support for feature requests: https://sevasek.com/crm

License

MIT