Etch is a signed audit chain for AI agent decisions. Events are signed, organized per project as a Merkle chain, and anchored to a public transparency log, and can be verified offline against a pinned public key. Hosted at etch.systems.
Purpose Used to record and audit decision events of AI agents. Etch signs decisions, not content. It records who reviewed an output and what they applied, not whether a particular model ever touched the text.
Repository positioning This repository, etch-mcp, is the MCP integration interface for the hosted Etch service and contains only: MCP registration metadata (server.json, glama.json); integration examples for the Claude Code / Cursor / Continue / Cline / Codex clients; and documentation for connecting MCP-compatible clients to Etch. The source code of the hosted Etch service is proprietary and lives in another repository; using Etch does not require viewing or modifying anything in this repository. The metadata and documentation in this repository are MIT-licensed, while the hosted Etch service uses the Business Source License 1.1 with a hosted service restriction, with terms at etch.systems/pricing.
Main capabilities
- Signed audit chain: events are signed and organized per project as a Merkle chain.
- Public anchoring: epochs are anchored on Rekor.
- Offline verification: every signed event can be verified offline against a pinned public key with the open-source reference verifier; auditors only need to pin the fingerprint once during pilot onboarding, and after that every historical epoch can be verified indefinitely without contacting Etch.
How to use You can try it in 30 seconds without registration: the response returns a bearer token, the MCP endpoint URL, and an anonymous project id; point any MCP-compatible client at https://etch.systems/mcp and use it with that token. An anonymous project carries 500 signed events within 14 days and can be converted to a persistent project at any time to retain the chain permanently.
Client configuration references (for the exact current location of each configuration file, see etch.systems/docs/mcp-clients):
- Claude Code: ~/.claude/settings.json
- Cursor: ~/.cursor/mcp.json (or .cursor/mcp.json in the project root)
- Continue: ~/.continue/config.yaml
- Cline (VS Code): ~/.config/Cline/User/globalStorage/saoudrizwan.claude-dev/settings/cline_mcp_settings.json
- Codex: ~/.codex/config.toml
The complete operating guide is at etch.systems/docs/quickstart.
Applicable scenarios and compliance mapping Etch provides framework mappings, including SR 11-7, EU AI Act Article 12, ISO 42001, and NIST AI RMF (see etch.systems/aarm).
Limitations and boundaries
- It is not a media provenance wrapper (that field is C2PA and SPIF): Etch signs decisions, not content; see the comparison at etch.systems/vs/c2pa.
- It is not a transparency log (that field is Sigstore Rekor): Etch is a per-project chain that anchors epochs on Rekor; see the comparison at etch.systems/vs/sigstore-rekor.
- It is not a watermarking system: Etch records who reviewed the output and what they applied, and does not determine whether a particular model ever touched the text.
Registration information Etch is listed in the following places: Official MCP Registry (io.github.SaravananJaichandar/etch); Glama.ai MCP servers (automatically indexed from this repository's glama.json); the Knowledge & Memory category of punkpeye/awesome-mcp-servers; the Agent Identity & Attestation category of agentrust-io/awesome-ai-governance; and the MCP Security category of ottosulin/awesome-ai-security. PulseMCP will automatically index it from the Official MCP Registry after its inclusion is restored, with no separate submission required.
Contact For questions about the hosted service, contact us via etch.systems; for questions about the metadata or integration examples in this repository, submit a GitHub issue in this repository.
Other information (reference verifier benchmark data, FAQ, pricing, etc.) is available at etch.systems, etch.systems/docs/faq, and etch.systems/pricing.
