Three social products now expose Model Context Protocol to Claude and ChatGPT, and they are not the same product. The useful split is where the agent is allowed to stop: inside an approval chain, inside a creator queue, or inside an enterprise suite.
Planable is built for agencies and multi-brand teams. Its MCP connector creates posts as drafts in the right workspace and leaves them in the approval chain — internal review, then client sign-off. Claude can comment, list pending approvals, and, if you grant it, approve or reject. Publishing is still Planable’s workflow. After approval, an edit reopens the chain. If you need “the AI never goes live,” this is the tightest default.
Buffer is the creator and small-team path. One MCP server plus a Buffer API key covers eleven channels. The agent drafts, schedules, and reads analytics; the human still opens Buffer. There is no multi-client approval graph. That is a feature if you are one person or a tight studio, and a gap if a brand sign-off is mandatory.
Hootsuite Social OS is the enterprise bundle. Perch MCP covers publish and planning, Nest MCP covers the inbox, Lumen MCP covers listening. Wisdom sits on top. You are not wiring a single queue; you are wiring publish, replies, and intelligence. Fit that to a social-ops team that already lives in Hootsuite, not to a solo creator.
Choose Planable when approval is the product. Choose Buffer when channel count and one review queue are enough. Choose Hootsuite when inbox and listening must share the same agent as publishing. The MCP logo on the docs page does not tell you the blast radius; the stop-point does.
