MQTT
· #96 most-usedThe pub/sub backbone for every connected device
MQTT is an OASIS-standard publish-subscribe protocol built for IoT — tiny payloads, minimal bandwidth, and reliable delivery even over lossy 4G links. Connect it to Actionist and your agents can publish commands to devices, subscribe to live sensor feeds, read retained state without waiting for new events, and react to broker anomalies the moment they appear. From a single smart thermostat to a 50,000-device industrial fleet, the agent is always listening — and always ready to act.
Eliminates manual work. Eliminates manual broker log-trawling, spreadsheet-based device health checks, and hand-crafted publish scripts that ops engineers run every morning.
What your MQTT agent runs on autopilot
A week of scheduled jobs your Actionist agent will execute on your behalf.
MQTT × every other app you use
End-to-end automations that span multiple apps — each one a real business outcome.
IoT alert to resolved ticket in 60 seconds
When a customer's device publishes a critical error payload to the MQTT broker, your agent reads the retained error state, opens a support ticket in Gmail, publishes an acknowledgement back to the device topic, posts the ticket link in Slack, and books a follow-up call on Google Calendar — all before a human has finished reading the alert email. Customer confidence stays high; response SLAs stay green.
What this looks like for your team
The comparison strip shows real manual tasks your agent replaces. The calculator translates that into your team's numbers.
- SalesTrial usage trackingSales reps manually check broker dashboards to see whether trial devices are active, usually once a day at best.18 min/weekSales AgentAgent flags high-intent device signalsAgent reads broker stats for every trial client ID and posts engagement spikes to #iot-trials before the rep's morning coffee.
- MarketingCampaign reach reportsMarketers export device-count CSVs from the broker admin panel and paste them into campaign decks by hand.13 min/weekMarketing AgentAgent publishes and logs fleet broadcastsAgent publishes announcement payloads to the fleet and writes delivery counts to the campaign tracker in real time.
- Customer SupportReactive error pollingSupport engineers SSH into broker hosts and grep logs to find the last error payload a device published — often 20 minutes after the customer calls.18 min/weekCustomer Support AgentAgent reads retained error state instantlyAgent fetches the retained error topic for any device in seconds and opens a pre-populated ticket before the call ends.
- Human ResourcesOn-call roster vs. broker alertsHR maintains a separate spreadsheet to cross-reference which engineer is on call when the broker fires an alert — manual lookup every incident.7 min/weekHuman Resources AgentAgent routes alerts to the on-call engineerAgent reads the on-call schedule and publishes a direct-channel MQTT command to the right engineer's notification device.
- FinanceMetered usage reconciliationFinance pulls message-count CSVs from the broker monthly and manually maps them to customer invoices — error-prone and hours-long.13 min/weekFinance AgentAgent reads broker stats at billing closeAgent fetches per-client message volumes from $SYS topics and populates invoice line items in HubSpot automatically.
- OperationsFleet config push via terminalOps engineers SSH into each device group and run mosquitto_pub scripts to distribute config updates — a 25-minute ritual per release.25 min/weekOperations AgentAgent publishes retained config to fleetAgent reads the config sheet, publishes retained payloads to each device topic, and logs every delivery to the audit trail.
- LegalData-residency auditLegal manually documents which MQTT topics carry PII by interviewing engineers and reading broker logs — slow and incomplete.6 min/weekLegal AgentAgent maps topic-to-data-type inventoryAgent subscribes to topic patterns, classifies payload schemas, and writes the data-residency map to a Notion compliance page.
+ 100s of other automations your agent handles
See what your team gets back
Baseline: 2.5 hrs saved per person per week, across the full MQTT automation set.
How to plug MQTT into Actionist
Pick the connection method that suits your environment.
The fastest path. Install Actionist's MQTT MCP server in one click and the agent publishes, subscribes, and reads retained messages through a permissioned broker session — no raw credential strings to manage.
Find MQTT in the Apps library and click Connect. MCP is selected by default.
Provide the broker host, port, and protocol (mqtt://, mqtts://, ws://, or wss://). Actionist stores credentials encrypted; you never paste them into a workflow node.
Actionist runs a read-only call to verify the handshake. You're ready.
16 actions your agent can call
Read and write operations available to your Actionist agent.
7 events your agent can react to
Events your agent watches for, and the actions it kicks off in response.
Skills that pair with MQTT
Reusable agent skills that work well alongside this app.
Check monitor status, pause/resume uptime checks, and view heartbeat history directly from a workflow — pairs naturally with MQTT broker health monitoring.
MCP servers that work with MQTT
Connect Actionist to MCP servers built for or around this app.
Control monitor hardware (brightness, contrast, input) via DDC/CI — uses MQTT as the transport layer for remote display commands.
Mock MQTT brokers alongside HTTP, GraphQL, and WebSocket in one server — ideal for testing MQTT workflows without a live broker.
Official multi-protocol mock server supporting MQTT, WebSocket, HTTP, GraphQL, gRPC, SSE, and SOAP for integration testing.