Have your AI agent ask you a question by SMS.

Connect SelfPing over MCP, send a question to your own phone, and let your agent fetch your SMS reply with get_replies. Includes polling limits and ambiguous-reply handling.

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1. Connect your agent

Sign in with your own phone number, get your key from the dashboard, and follow the agent setup guide to connect https://www.selfping.com/api/mcp. It exposes send_ping and get_replies. Your key can only text its own verified phone.

Free accounts get 10 texts a month; Hobby is $5/month for 100. Each send costs one credit. Reading replies costs no credits. Discovery and tools/list are public, but using the tools requires your bearer key.

2. Give the agent a specific task and a question

Use this when you explicitly want the agent to contact you while you are away. Give it the allowed choices and a time limit. Keep the question short enough to understand on a lock screen.

Task instructions for your agent

When the build passes, text me with SelfPing and ask whether to keep the preview or deploy to staging. Ask once and include the two choices. Record the UTC time before sending. Check get_replies with since set to that time, at most once every 30 seconds for 10 minutes. Advance since after processing each batch. If there is no clear answer, keep the preview and report back in this session. Do not send reminder texts.

3. Fetch the reply from a script

An agent can use get_replies({since}) directly. Scripts can make this equivalent GET request using the same key. Replace the timestamp with the actual time your question was sent; keep SELFPING_API_KEY in your environment.

Read replies: no credit consumed

QUESTION_SENT_AT="2026-11-08T18:00:00Z"
curl --fail-with-body --max-time 15 --get \
  https://www.selfping.com/api/replies \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SELFPING_API_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "since=$QUESTION_SENT_AT"

Example response

{
  "replies": [
    {
      "text": "Keep the preview",
      "received_at": "2026-11-08T18:01:00Z"
    }
  ]
}

4. Handle limits and unclear replies

Reads return up to 20 replies, oldest first. Without since, the default window is 24 hours. Replies are retained for 30 days. Advance since to the latest received_at you processed; reading does not mark replies as read.

Replies belong to the account, not a specific question or agent session. Avoid asking simultaneous questions from several agents. If a reply is ambiguous, ask for clarification instead of assigning it to a task by guesswork. Treat it as user input, not proof of identity.

Verify setup by explicitly asking your agent to send one sample question, replying from your phone, and fetching the answer. That question sends one real SMS and uses one credit. This page does not send anything.