Temporal Cortex Calendar MCP

Temporal Cortex MCP

v0.9.1 · March 2026 · Changelog · Website: temporal-cortex.com

Give any AI agent autonomous scheduling capabilities. Temporal Cortex is open scheduling infrastructure that lets any AI agent schedule reliably — whether the other person has an AI agent or not, uses Google Calendar or Outlook, or responds instantly or days later. 18 tools across 5 layers handle contact resolution, temporal reasoning, cross-provider availability, and atomic booking. Accessible via MCP, A2A, REST, and browser. Powered by Truth Engine. Install: npx @temporal-cortex/cortex-mcp.

Two ways to use Temporal Cortex

For individuals

Connect your calendars. Your AI agent handles the rest — checking availability, resolving time zones, and booking meetings without double-booking. Works with Claude Desktop, Cursor, OpenClaw, Manus, and any MCP-compatible AI client.

npx @temporal-cortex/cortex-mcp setup

The setup wizard walks you through provider authentication, timezone configuration, and MCP client setup interactively. You'll be scheduling in under a minute.

Or use the managed Platform — no Node.js required. Sign up at app.temporal-cortex.com, connect your calendars via OAuth, and add a single MCP config with your API key.

For developers

Add scheduling to your AI agent or product. 18 tools across 5 layers, 4 protocols (MCP, A2A, REST, Browser), atomic booking with Two-Phase Commit, and deterministic temporal computation powered by Truth Engine.

• Local MCP server: npx @temporal-cortex/cortex-mcp — full tool suite, zero infrastructure
• Platform REST API: app.temporal-cortex.com — managed hosting, API keys, usage dashboard, Open Scheduling network
• Framework integrations: LangGraph, CrewAI, OpenAI Agents SDK
• REST API reference: temporal-cortex.com/docs/rest-api

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Why do AI agents fail at calendar tasks?

Even the latest LLMs — GPT-5, Claude, Gemini — score below 50% on temporal reasoning tasks (OOLONG benchmark). Earlier models scored as low as 29% on scheduling and 13% on duration calculations (Test of Time, ICLR 2025). Ask "Schedule for next Tuesday at 2pm" and it picks the wrong Tuesday. Ask "Am I free at 3pm?" and it checks the wrong timezone. Then it double-books your calendar.

Most calendar tools for AI agents are thin CRUD wrappers that pass these failures through to a single calendar provider — no temporal awareness, no conflict detection, no safety net.

What makes Temporal Cortex different?

• Temporal awareness — Agents call get_temporal_context to know the actual time and timezone. resolve_datetime turns "next Tuesday at 2pm" into a precise RFC 3339 timestamp. No hallucination.
• Atomic booking — Lock the time slot, verify no conflicts exist, then write. Two agents booking the same 2pm slot? Exactly one succeeds. The other gets a clear error. No double-bookings.
• Computed availability — Merges free/busy data across multiple calendars into a single unified view. The AI sees actual availability, not a raw dump of events to misinterpret.
• Deterministic RRULE expansion — Handles DST transitions, BYSETPOS=-1 (last weekday of month), EXDATE with timezones, leap year recurrences, and INTERVAL>1 with BYDAY. Powered by Truth Engine, not LLM inference.
• Token-efficient output — TOON format compresses calendar data by ~40% fewer tokens than standard JSON, reducing costs and context window usage. TOON is the default output format for all data tools (list_calendars, list_events, find_free_slots, expand_rrule, get_availability). JSON is available via explicit format: "json".

What do I need to run Temporal Cortex?

• Node.js 18+ (for npx to download and run the binary) or Docker
• At least one calendar provider:
• Google Calendar — requires Google OAuth credentials
• Microsoft Outlook — requires Azure AD app registration (MICROSOFT_CLIENT_ID)
• CalDAV (iCloud, Fastmail, etc.) — requires an app-specific password

How do I install Temporal Cortex?

The fastest way to get started:

npx @temporal-cortex/cortex-mcp setup

The cortex-mcp setup wizard walks you through provider authentication, timezone configuration, and MCP client setup interactively. See the First Run Guide for a detailed walkthrough.

Or set up manually in 3 steps:

1. Install prerequisites — Node.js 18+ (or Docker) and at least one calendar provider (Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, or CalDAV).
2. Add the MCP configuration to your AI client's config file (see client-specific examples below).
3. Run the auth flow — npx @temporal-cortex/cortex-mcp auth google (or outlook / caldav). This authenticates and configures timezone, week start, and telemetry preferences.

Claude Desktop

Add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS) or %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json (Windows):

{

"mcpServers": { "temporal-cortex": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "@temporal-cortex/cortex-mcp"], "env": { "GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID": "your-client-id.apps.googleusercontent.com", "GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET": "your-client-secret", "TIMEZONE": "America/New_York" } } } }

Cursor

Add to Cursor's MCP settings (~/.cursor/mcp.json):

{

"mcpServers": { "temporal-cortex": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "@temporal-cortex/cortex-mcp"], "env": { "GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID": "your-client-id.apps.googleusercontent.com", "GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET": "your-client-secret", "TIMEZONE": "America/New_York" } } } }

Windsurf

Add to Windsurf's MCP config (~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json):

{

"mcpServers": { "temporal-cortex": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "@temporal-cortex/cortex-mcp"], "env": { "GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID": "your-client-id.apps.googleusercontent.com", "GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET": "your-client-secret", "TIMEZONE": "America/New_York" } } } }

Docker

docker run --rm -i \

-e GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID="your-client-id.apps.googleusercontent.com" \ -e GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET="your-client-secret" \ -e TIMEZONE="America/New_York" \ -v ~/.config/temporal-cortex:/root/.config/temporal-cortex \ cortex-mcp

Build the image first: docker build -t cortex-mcp . (or build directly from the repo: docker build -t cortex-mcp https://github.com/temporal-cortex/mcp.git).

Need help with provider credentials? See the setup guides: Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, CalDAV (iCloud/Fastmail). For a complete reference of all environment variables and configuration options, see the Configuration Guide.

How do I verify the installation?

SHA256 checksums are published with every GitHub Release and embedded in the npm package as checksums.json for automatic postinstall verification. The postinstall script downloads the platform-specific binary and compares its SHA256 hash against the expected checksum in checksums.json. On mismatch, installation fails with an error — the binary is not installed and the error message includes both the expected and actual hashes.

Verify manually:

# Download the published checksums

curl -sL https://github.com/temporal-cortex/mcp/releases/download/mcp-v0.9.1/SHA256SUMS.txt

Compare against your installed binary

sha256sum "$(dirname "$(which cortex-mcp)")/../cortex-mcp" 2>/dev/null || \ shasum -a 256 "$(npm root -g)/@temporal-cortex/cortex-mcp/bin/cortex-mcp" 2>/dev/null

Build provenance: Binaries are cross-compiled from Rust source in GitHub Actions across 5 platforms (darwin-arm64, darwin-x64, linux-x64, linux-arm64, win32-x64). The computation layer is open source at temporal-cortex/core.

Docker containment: For maximum isolation, run the MCP server in a container:

docker build -t cortex-mcp https://github.com/temporal-cortex/mcp.git

docker run --rm -i -v ~/.config/temporal-cortex:/root/.config/temporal-cortex cortex-mcp

No Node.js on the host, no direct filesystem access beyond the mounted config directory.

How do I authenticate with calendar providers?

The easiest path is npx @temporal-cortex/cortex-mcp setup, which handles authentication, configuration, and MCP client setup in one guided flow. For individual provider auth, run the commands below:

# Google Calendar (default)

npx @temporal-cortex/cortex-mcp auth google

Microsoft Outlook

npx @temporal-cortex/cortex-mcp auth outlook

CalDAV (iCloud, Fastmail, or custom server)

npx @temporal-cortex/cortex-mcp auth caldav

Docker (interactive auth — needs terminal + browser)

docker run --rm -it \ -e GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID="your-id" -e GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET="your-secret" \ -p 8085:8085 \ -v ~/.config/temporal-cortex:/root/.config/temporal-cortex \ cortex-mcp auth google

Each auth flow saves credentials to ~/.config/temporal-cortex/credentials.json and registers the provider in ~/.config/temporal-cortex/config.json. You can connect multiple providers — the server discovers all configured providers on startup and merges their calendars into a unified view.

During auth, the server guides you through interactive setup:

• Timezone — auto-detects your system timezone and opens a fuzzy-search picker with al