Show HN: NeedHuman – API that lets AI agents hire a real human when stuck

3 comments

• $mariusaure 5 hours ago

  I built this because I kept losing flow when building with agents.

  I run Claude Code for multi-step tasks. The agent does 15 steps fine, then hits a CAPTCHA or email verification and stops. I alt-tab, do the thing, come back. This happens like half a dozen times a day.

  So I made NeedHuman which is just a REST API and MCP server. The agent POSTs a task description. A human picks it up, does it, posts the result. The agent polls and continues. The agent is the customer — it sends structured requests and gets machine-readable results back.

  That human is me. I complete every task personally. 36 tasks done so far, all for my own agents.

  There is no signup, just:

    curl -X POST https://needhuman.ai/api/v1/keys/register \
      -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
      -d '{"name":"my-agent"}'
  
    curl -X POST https://needhuman.ai/api/v1/tasks \
      -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_KEY" \
      -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
      -d '{"description":"Check if the username mercury-app is available on npmjs.com"}'
  

  3 free tasks per key. MCP: claude mcp add needhuman -- npx -y @needhuman/mcp-server

  So I am curious when you build with agents, and it stops mid-task and needs a human, what do you do?

• $sharemywin 4 hours ago

  thought of making it an mcp server

  [-]
  • $mariusaure 3 hours ago

    yes it's @needhuman/mcp-server@0.3.2 on npm. it has three tools: need_human, check_task_status, list_tasks. works via stdio (local install) and remote HTTP at needhuman.ai/mcp.

    or just

    claude mcp add needhuman -- npx -y @needhuman/mcp-server