feat: expose any Actor as an MCP tool — apify actors expose-as-mcp #1439

Problem

Apify's MCP server already lets AI agents call Actors from the Apify Store. But if a developer builds a private or custom Actor, there is no CLI path to make it available as an MCP tool to their local AI agent.

The workflow today is:

1. apify push — deploy Actor to Apify
2. Manually configure the MCP server to include that Actor
3. Hope the AI agent discovers it

There's no single CLI command that closes this loop.

Proposal

Add a subcommand that registers a pushed Actor as an MCP-accessible tool in the user's local IDE config:

apify actors expose-as-mcp [ACTOR_ID]

Or as a flag on push:

apify push --expose-as-mcp

What it does

1. Reads the Actor's INPUT_SCHEMA.json to generate an MCP tool description
2. Registers the Actor in the local MCP config (same targets as apify mcp install)
3. The Actor then appears as a callable tool in Claude, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.

Example

$ apify push --expose-as-mcp

Pushing Actor...  ✓ my-custom-scraper deployed (version 0.3)
Registering as MCP tool...
  Tool name:    apify_my-custom-scraper
  Description:  (from INPUT_SCHEMA.json title/description)
  ✓ Added to Claude Desktop  ~/.claude/settings.json
  ✓ Added to Cursor          ~/.cursor/mcp.json

Restart your IDE. You can now say: "Run my custom scraper on https://example.com"

MCP tool shape (auto-generated from INPUT_SCHEMA.json)

{
  "name": "apify_my-custom-scraper",
  "description": "Scrapes product listings from e-commerce sites",
  "inputSchema": { /* derived from Actor INPUT_SCHEMA.json */ }
}

Why it matters

• Turns every Apify Actor into an AI-native tool with one flag
• Direct revenue channel: each AI-triggered Actor run = compute billing
• Lowers the skill floor for AI developers who don't know Apify internals
• Differentiates Apify from generic scraping APIs — you publish once, AI agents discover automatically

Out of scope

• Auto-generating the input schema (see related issue below)
• Publishing to the public Apify Store (separate flow)

Related

• apify/apify-mcp-server chore(deps): update dependency @apify/json_schemas to ^0.17.0 #1351 — Actor development loop over MCP
• apify/apify-mcp-server do not add .venv to gitignore #1353 — Add build-actor tool
• feat: apify mcp install — one-command MCP setup for Claude, Cursor, Windsurf, and Copilot #1438 — apify mcp install for AI IDEs