sleepLABSCO SUMMARY
Small on purpose, and the ceiling is the design.
A tool that just waits sounds trivial until an agent is polling something that takes a minute to become ready — models are bad at pausing and good at retrying immediately. The part worth noticing is the configured maximum: without it, a model that asks for an hour gets an hour. With it, an over-long request comes back as a refusal that names the limit, so the workflow keeps moving instead of stalling somewhere you cannot see.
What it is
An MCP server whose whole purpose is to make an agent wait. It exposes a single tool that pauses for a specified duration and then tells the model it can continue, which gives a workflow a way to sequence steps around something that needs time to finish.
What you get
- Execution paused for a number of seconds, after which the model is told it can carry on —
sleep - A ceiling you control: ask for longer than the configured maximum and the tool refuses with a message naming the limit, instead of hanging
- A default maximum wait of 60 seconds, overridden with
MCP_SLEEP_TIMEOUT
Requirements
No account and no key. uv installed; the client entry runs uvx mcp-sleep, with MCP_SLEEP_TIMEOUT in the env block if you want a different ceiling. uvx mcp-sleep --transport sse runs it over SSE for clients that prefer that, and a Docker image is available as an alternative command. Also installable through Smithery or mcp-get. The pyproject name is mcp-sleep (0.1.1).
Setup effort
One command — uvx mcp-sleep
USE CASES
01
Waiting for something to become ready
Pause between a request that kicks off work and the call that checks whether it finished.
02
Keeping steps in the order you intended
Insert a deliberate delay so a later action does not run before an earlier one has taken effect.
03
Bounding how long an agent can stall
Set the timeout to the longest wait you will tolerate, so an over-long request is refused rather than honoured.
1 tool
Listed in project docs. Your client may show a different list.
BEFORE YOU INSTALL
What to know first
Tools you get
1 tool named in the project's documentation.
Requires
uvx on PATH
Where it runs
Both documented setups run the server on your machine.
INSTALLATION
Connect your client
Server setup
TERMINAL
uvx mcp-sleepMCP Clients
Claude Desktop
CLAUDE DESKTOP · JSON
{
"mcpServers": {
"mcp-sleep": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"mcp-sleep"
],
"env": {
"MCP_SLEEP_TIMEOUT": "<YOUR_MCP_SLEEP_TIMEOUT>"
}
}
}
}<YOUR_MCP_SLEEP_TIMEOUT> is the longest wait you allow, in seconds — or delete the MCP_SLEEP_TIMEOUT entry to keep the default of 60.
Claude Desktop — Docker
CLAUDE DESKTOP — DOCKER · JSON
{
"mcpServers": {
"mcp-sleep": {
"command": "docker",
"args": [
"run",
"-i",
"--rm",
"-e",
"MCP_SLEEP_TIMEOUT",
"mcp/sleep"
],
"env": {
"MCP_SLEEP_TIMEOUT": "<YOUR_MCP_SLEEP_TIMEOUT>"
}
}
}
}<YOUR_MCP_SLEEP_TIMEOUT> is the longest wait you allow, in seconds — or delete the MCP_SLEEP_TIMEOUT entry to keep the default of 60.
