Ably

@ably show me the message history for the 'game-lobby-42' channel from the last hour, including any presence events

Retrieved 47 messages from 'game-lobby-42' spanning the last hour. The channel saw 12 unique clients, with peak activity at 14:23 UTC (8 messages in one minute). Message types include 23 chat messages, 15 game-state updates, and 9 player-action events. Presence history shows 5 enter events and 3 leave events. The most recent message was sent 2 minutes ago by client 'player_8f3a'. Note: History is limited to the retention period configured for your Ably app (typically 24-72 hours depending on plan).

This example demonstrates Ably's message and presence history retrieval, which is essential for debugging real-time applications or reconstructing session state. Requires channels.history permission in your API key scope. Be aware that history depth and granularity depend on your Ably plan tier and configured retention settings.

@ably subscribe device token 'fcm:dGhpc19pc19hX3Rva2Vu' to push notifications for channels 'alerts' and 'system-updates'

Successfully subscribed device 'fcm:dGhpc19hX3Rva2Vu' to push notifications for 2 channels. The device will now receive push notifications for messages published to 'alerts' and 'system-updates'. Subscription is active immediately for new messages. Note: This operation modified your push notification configuration — the device will receive notifications even when not actively connected via realtime. To verify, check the push subscriptions list or test by publishing a message to either channel.

This write operation showcases Ably's push notification management, allowing server-side subscription control without client SDK involvement. Requires push.subscribe permission. Important: This creates a persistent subscription that continues sending notifications until explicitly deleted, which can impact your push notification quota and user experience if not managed carefully.

@ably get our application stats for the last 24 hours and summarize which channels had the highest message throughput

Retrieved hourly statistics for the past 24 hours. Your application processed 1.2M messages across 340 active channels. Top 5 channels by message volume: 'live-feed-main' (284K messages, 23.7% of total), 'chat-global' (156K), 'game-state-prod' (98K), 'notifications' (71K), and 'analytics-events' (52K). Peak hour was 18:00-19:00 UTC with 89K messages. Connection count averaged 2,400 concurrent connections with a peak of 3,100. This analysis suggests 'live-feed-main' may benefit from channel sharding if latency becomes an issue at scale.

This synthesis example pairs Ably's stats API with AI reasoning to identify usage patterns and potential optimizations. The stats endpoint provides granular metrics (messages, connections, channels) that are invaluable for capacity planning and cost management. Requires stats.read permission. Stats are typically delayed by 5-10 minutes, so this isn't suitable for real-time monitoring.

When Ably beats building your own chat audit trail

A 6-person support team needs to review chat transcripts from the last 30 days when a customer escalates. Ably's channel history tool pulls message logs without you writing retention logic or running a database. The catch: Ably's free tier keeps 2 minutes of history; paid plans go to 24-72 hours depending on tier. If your compliance window is longer than 72 hours, you'll need to pipe messages to your own store anyway, which makes the MCP less useful. For teams inside that window, this MCP turns a 3-day engineering project into a 10-minute Switchy workflow. You authenticate once with an API key, then any teammate can query chat logs by channel ID without touching the Ably dashboard. If your support volume is under 500 conversations a month and you're on a paid Ably plan, this is the fastest path to searchable chat history.

Debugging push subscriptions without SSH-ing into prod

A 3-person mobile team ships an iOS app with Ably push notifications. Users report they're not getting alerts for specific channels. The team needs to verify which devices are subscribed to which channels without deploying debug builds or tailing server logs. Ably's list and delete subscription tools let you inspect and prune subscriptions in real time. The MCP gives your PM or QA lead direct access to subscription state without waiting on an engineer to write a one-off admin script. The limit: if you have 10,000+ active devices, pagination gets tedious and you'll want a bulk export instead. For teams under 5,000 devices, this MCP turns a 2-hour investigation into a 5-minute Switchy query. Authenticate with your Ably API key, search by channel or device ID, and fix subscription drift before your next sprint.

When presence history matters more than message logs

A 4-person game studio runs a turn-based multiplayer prototype on Ably. Players drop mid-session and the team needs to know if it's a network issue or a bug. Ably's presence history tool shows who joined, left, or timed out of a channel in the last hour. The MCP lets your designer or producer pull session timelines without writing SQL or parsing server logs. The trade-off: presence history is capped at 2 hours on most plans, so if you need forensics beyond that window, you'll need to stream presence events to your own database. For early-stage teams iterating on session stability, this MCP is faster than building observability from scratch. Authenticate once, then anyone on the team can query presence by channel ID and timestamp. If your sessions are under 100 concurrent users and you're debugging connection patterns, this is the right tool.