Introducing the RotaHog API and MCP server

Published on: September 27, 2026, by: João Alves

Until today, RotaHog lived inside a browser. You'd open the app, check the schedule, mark turns as done. It worked, but it meant context-switching every time you needed rotation data somewhere else: a script, a dashboard, a Slack bot, or just a quick "who's on call?" question to your AI assistant.

Today we're launching two things that change that: a REST API and a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server.

The REST API

The API gives you programmatic access to everything you can do in the RotaHog UI. It's a straightforward JSON API with Bearer token authentication.

What you can do:

• List your rotations: get all rotations you own or participate in
• Check who's on duty: the /turns/current endpoint returns exactly what you need for dashboards and bots
• Browse the schedule: filter turns by status, date range, and paginate through history
• Create a rotation: post a task, a frequency and a list of people, and get back a year of scheduled turns
• Take action: complete turns, assign substitutes, and cancel upcoming turns via the API

A quick example, checking who's on call:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer rh_your_token" \
  https://rotahog.com/api/v1/rotations/your_token/turns/current

{
  "turn": {
    "scheduled_date": "2026-09-27",
    "status": "upcoming",
    "acting_member": {
      "name": "Alice",
      "email": "alice@example.com"
    }
  }
}

To get started, go to your account menu and click API Tokens to create a token. Choose read scope for read-only access, or read_write if you want to take actions like completing turns. Full documentation is on the API docs page.

The MCP server

If you use an AI assistant like Claude, Cursor, or any tool that supports the Model Context Protocol, you can now connect it directly to RotaHog.

Once configured, you can ask your AI things like:

• "Who's on call for the deploy rotation this week?"
• "Show me all upcoming turns for our standup rotation"
• "Mark my turn as complete"
• "Find a substitute for my turn on Friday"

The MCP server runs on RotaHog's side, no local setup needed. You just add our URL and your API token to your MCP client configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "rotahog": {
      "url": "https://rotahog.com/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer rh_your_token"
      }
    }
  }
}

That's it. The AI gets access to 8 tools that mirror the API: creating a rotation, listing rotations, checking current turns, completing tasks, substituting members, and more. Full setup instructions are on the MCP docs page.

What can you build with this?

A few ideas:

• A team dashboard that shows who's on duty across all rotations
• A custom Slack bot that responds to "who's on call?" with a real answer
• Zapier/n8n automations that trigger workflows when it's someone's turn
• AI-powered scheduling.let your AI assistant manage substitutions when someone is out
• Reporting scripts that track completion rates across your team

Availability

The MCP server is available on every plan, including free: an assistant can do what you can do in the browser, within the same limits. The REST API is available on Team Toolkit ($19/year) and Ops Pro ($49/year) plans.

Rate limits are set at 30 requests per minute per token.generous enough for integrations, tight enough to keep things fair.