GetSms

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A self-hosted, single-user service that collects the SMS your own phones receive and exposes one MCP tool — get_latest_code — so your AI agent can fetch a verification code by keyword.

You run your own instance. There is no shared or hosted service, no accounts, and no multi-tenant anything. It's you, your phones, your server.

• One job, done well — an AI agent asks "give me the 淘宝 code" and gets it.

• No app to install — the device side reuses tools that already exist (iOS Shortcuts today).

• Tiny & auditable — one Node process, SQLite, no telemetry, no outbound calls.

• MCP-native — plug it into Claude Code, Cursor, or any MCP client over Streamable HTTP.

Contents

• What it is

• ⚠️ Security warning

• How it works

• Why there's no app to install

• Quick start

• Configure your phone

• Connect your agent

• Production deployment (HTTPS)

• Run without Docker (systemd)

• Config reference

• API reference

• Development

• Roadmap

• Contributing

• License

What it is

GetSms stores every SMS message your phones forward to it, persistently, in a local SQLite database. It does not try to guess which messages are verification codes at write time — everything is stored as-is. Filtering happens at read time: your MCP client asks for a code by keyword (the sender/brand, e.g. 淘宝), and GetSms looks for a recent message that contains both that keyword and a verification-code phrase.

The keyword is required by design. An agent must know which service's code it wants — GetSms will never hand back "the latest code from anywhere," so a leaked MCP key can't be used to vacuum up every code you receive.

⚠️ Security warning

Read this before you deploy.

GetSms keeps a persistent, plaintext archive of every SMS message you forward to it. This is not a short-lived relay that forgets messages after they're read — it is a permanent log of your SMS history for as long as the database file exists. That makes it meaningfully more sensitive than a one-shot code-forwarding service: if the server is compromised, an attacker gets your entire SMS history, not just one code.

• Run it only on a machine you trust and control (your own server, your own VPS, your own home box) — not on shared or untrusted infrastructure.

• GetSms does not do TLS itself. Put it behind a reverse proxy (Caddy, nginx, Traefik, etc.) with a real certificate before exposing it to the internet, or restrict it to a private network / VPN. See Production deployment.

• Keep the SQLite database file (GETSMS_DB_PATH) private — restrict its file permissions and don't back it up to somewhere less trusted than the server itself.

• This is not end-to-end encrypted. The server sees every message body in plaintext, because it has to, in order to extract codes and store your history. There is no protection against a compromised server other than not compromising it.

If this trade-off doesn't work for your threat model, don't deploy GetSms.

How it works

[a phone]                       [your server, one process]        [your agent]
receives a code SMS                                                needs a code
   │                                                                    │
   │ phone automation (iOS Shortcuts)                                   │ MCP: get_latest_code
   │ POST /ingest/{device token}                                        │ (keyword required)
   ▼                                                                    ▼
 ┌──────────────────┐  store as-is, tag device   ┌──────────────┐  query  ┌──────────────┐
 │ Ingest HTTP API  │ ──────────────────────────▶│ SQLite store  │◀────── │  MCP Server  │
 │ /ingest/:token   │                             │ full archive  │        │              │
 └──────────────────┘                             └──────────────┘        └──────────────┘

Incoming SMS are written to SQLite unmodified — no filtering happens at ingest time. All matching (keyword, verification-code detection, time window) happens when the MCP tool is called. Both the HTTP ingest API and the MCP server run in a single Node process.

Why there's no app to install

On purpose. iOS gives third-party apps no API to read SMS at all, so no app — GetSms's or anyone else's — can do it. The only consumer-available path on iOS is Apple's own Shortcuts automation, which can watch for incoming messages and POST them somewhere. That's what GetSms's device side uses for v1: see docs/setup-ios-shortcut.md.

Android support (via SmsForwarder or Tasker, which can read SMS with user consent) is on the roadmap but not implemented yet.

Quick start

Requires Docker, or Node.js >= 20 (see Run without Docker).

1. Copy the example environment file:

   cp .env.example .env

2. Generate a random MCP API key and a random token for each phone you plan to forward from:

   openssl rand -hex 16   # run once per secret

   Put the API key in GETSMS_MCP_API_KEY and one token per device into GETSMS_DEVICES (see Config reference).

3. Start it:

   docker compose up -d

The server listens on GETSMS_PORT (default 3000), mapped to 3000 on the host by docker-compose.yml. Put a TLS-terminating reverse proxy in front of it before exposing it publicly — see below.

Configure your phone

Device-side setup (iOS) is a Shortcuts automation, not an app install. Follow docs/setup-ios-shortcut.md for exact, numbered steps, including the required trigger configuration and a reliability caveat you should read before relying on this for anything time-sensitive.

Connect your agent

Point your MCP client at your server's /mcp endpoint using Streamable HTTP transport, with a bearer header:

https://YOUR_SERVER/mcp
Authorization: Bearer <GETSMS_MCP_API_KEY>

For example, with Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http getsms https://YOUR_SERVER/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer <GETSMS_MCP_API_KEY>"

The server exposes exactly one tool, get_latest_code:

get_latest_code({ keyword, device?, since? })

• keyword — required. The SMS source/brand: the Chinese 【】 signature (e.g. 淘宝, 京东, 12306) or an English service name. Omitting it returns nothing.

• device — optional, filters to one device's label (from GETSMS_DEVICES).

• since — optional ISO timestamp; overrides the default recent-message time window (GETSMS_WINDOW_MINUTES).

A message matches when its body contains keyword and contains one of the configured verification-code indicator terms, and was received within the time window. The tool returns the extracted code (if one could be found), the raw message body, the device label, and the received timestamp. Note: the "received" timestamp and the time window are both measured from when the server ingests the forwarded message, not the phone's actual receipt time — any delay in the forwarding automation counts against the window.

Production deployment (HTTPS)

GetSms speaks plain HTTP on GETSMS_PORT. Terminate TLS with a reverse proxy. Caddy is the least-effort option — automatic Let's Encrypt certificates:

# /etc/caddy/Caddyfile
sms.example.com {
    reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:3000
}

That's the whole config — Caddy obtains and renews the certificate automatically (ports 80 and 443 must be reachable). Then only expose 443 (and 22) at your firewall; keep 3000 bound to localhost.

server {
    listen 443 ssl;
    server_name sms.example.com;
    ssl_certificate     /etc/letsencrypt/live/sms.example.com/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/sms.example.com/privkey.pem;
    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000;
    }
}

If your server can't use standard ports 80/443, run the proxy on any high port (e.g. 8443) and include it in the URLs you give your phone and agent — a real certificate can still be obtained via a DNS-01 ACME challenge.

Run without Docker (systemd)

GetSms is plain ESM TypeScript run via tsx — no build step. To run it directly under systemd:

# on the server, as a non-root user (e.g. "getsms")
git clone <your-fork> /opt/getsms && cd /opt/getsms
npm ci --omit=dev
cp .env.example .env && $EDITOR .env

# /etc/systemd/system/getsms.service
[Unit]
Description=GetSms
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=getsms
WorkingDirectory=/opt/getsms
EnvironmentFile=/opt/getsms/.env
ExecStart=/usr/bin/node /opt/getsms/node_modules/tsx/dist/cli.mjs src/index.ts
Restart=always
MemoryMax=400M
NoNewPrivileges=true

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

sudo systemctl enable --now getsms

Config reference

All configuration is via environment variables (see .env.example).

API reference

• POST /ingest/:token — webhook the phone automation posts to. Body: { "text": "<sms body>", "sender"?: "..." }. Returns 202 on success, 401 for an unknown token, 400 if text is missing/empty.

• POST /mcp — MCP Streamable HTTP endpoint, requires Authorization: Bearer <GETSMS_MCP_API_KEY>. GET/DELETE return 405.

Development

npm install
npm test          # Vitest suite (npm run test:watch for watch mode)
npm run dev       # tsx watch, live reload
npm run typecheck # tsc --noEmit

No build step is required — plain ESM TypeScript executed directly via tsx. Requires Node.js >= 20. The test suite covers config parsing, the SQLite store, code extraction/matching, the ingest webhook, the MCP tool logic, and an end-to-end path.

Roadmap

• Android device side — setup guide for SmsForwarder / Tasker (the server side is already device-agnostic).

• Optional generic SMS query tool — read non-code messages, off by default.

• Pluggable storage — Redis/Postgres backend behind the existing store interface for multi-instance setups.

Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome. Please:

• Keep the single-user, self-hosted, no-telemetry design intact.

• Follow the existing TDD style — add/adjust tests alongside code; npm test and npm run typecheck must pass.

• Keep each source file focused (see src/ — config, storage, matching, ingest, MCP, wiring are separate).

License

MIT — see LICENSE.