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AI agent notifications with SMS from your own Android number

Published and updated

Agents run for minutes or hours and then need a human: a result to read, an approval to give, a question to answer. Chat notifications are missed. A text to the person who owns the task is not. With textbee the sender is an Android phone holding your SIM, so the message comes from your own number, recipients can reply, and the Pro plan, up to 5,000 messages for $9.99 a month with no per message fee.

How it works

  1. Connect the agent to textbee. Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor and any MCP client use the official @textbee/mcp server with your API key in the client config; anything else calls POST /gateway/send-sms directly.
  2. Tell the agent when to text: on completion, on failure, or when it needs a yes or no. Keep the message under one segment and name the task.
  3. Read the reply. The MCP server exposes the account messages, so the agent can ask for texts received since it sent the question; a workflow tool polls /gateway/messages with a cursor or receives a webhook.
  4. In n8n, an HTTP Request node sends and a Webhook node receives; no community node is needed.

Send it

The API key comes from the dashboard and the phone registered on your account does the sending. Recipients are E.164 numbers; the example is fictional.

send-agent-update.sh
curl -X POST https://api.textbee.dev/api/v1/gateway/send-sms \
  -H "x-api-key: $TEXTBEE_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"recipients": ["+12015550123"], "message": "Agent update: the nightly data import finished with 2 warnings. Reply GO to publish or HOLD to review."}'

Consent and compliance

The agent texts people who own the task, on numbers they gave for it. Keep the API key in the MCP client config or the workflow credentials, never in a prompt, and give the agent a rule to text only the configured numbers, since a tool that can send SMS to any number is a tool that can be talked into it.

Honest limits

One phone sends roughly 10 to 15 messages a minute, so a large blast takes time to drain. Agent notifications are few. The real limit is judgement: an agent that texts on every step is muted within a day, so notify on completion, failure and decisions only.

One phone sends roughly 10 to 15 messages a minute, so a large blast takes time to drain. Carriers can filter bulk patterns on consumer SIMs. Marketing messages still need consent from the recipient under the local rules.

Frequently asked questions

Which agents can send SMS through textbee?

Any MCP-compatible client through the official @textbee/mcp server: Claude Code, Claude Desktop and Cursor are documented. Any other agent or workflow tool that can make an HTTP request can call the API directly.

Can the agent read the reply?

Yes. The MCP server exposes message reading, and the HTTP API has GET /gateway/messages with a cursor. Have the agent ask for messages received after the time it sent the question.

Does this work with n8n or Zapier?

n8n is documented: an HTTP Request node sends and a Webhook node receives. Other automation tools that can make an HTTP request and receive a webhook work the same way.

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