Instinct MCP · User Guide
Using the Instinct MCP
The Instinct MCP gives your AI client read-only access to Instinct's MSP-intelligence corpus — company profiles, maturity scores, technographics, reputation, and market sizing — over a simple credit-metered API. This guide covers what it is, how to connect, how credits work, and every tool you can call.
Overview
What the Instinct MCP is
A read-only window into Instinct's MSP intelligence, priced by the credit.
Instinct continuously researches Managed Service Providers and builds a deep, current profile of each one. The MCP exposes that research to any MCP-compatible AI client (Claude, Cursor, and others) as a set of read-only tools. You ask your client a question; it calls the right tool and answers from Instinct's data.
It's company-first — built to help you understand accounts and territories. Every call draws from your credit balance, where 1 credit = $0.01. Cheaper tools are quick lookups; the richer analytic pulls cost more.
Read-only, always
The MCP never changes your Instinct data — every tool only reads. You can't break anything by exploring.
Setup
Connecting a client
Point any MCP client at your endpoint and sign in — no API keys to copy.
https://mcp.mspmcp.com/mcp- 1Add the server to your client
In Claude Code, run
claude mcp add --transport http instinct https://mcp.mspmcp.com/mcp. In Claude Desktop or Cursor, add a custom connector with this URL. - 2Sign in with Instinct
Your client opens an Instinct sign-in and consent screen. Approve access — that links the client to this account and its credits. No keys to paste.
- 3Start asking questions
Ask for a company profile, tech stack, FCML score, or a market count. Each call draws from your balance.
Step-by-step instructions live on the Connect client page.
Billing
Credits, plans & your balance
Monthly credits that reset each cycle — spend them on the tools you call.
Instinct MCP runs on credits: 1 credit = $0.01. Each tool has a fixed credit cost (listed below), and a few are priced per result returned. Your plan grants a monthly allotment of credits.
| Plan | Price | Credits / month |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | $100 / mo | 10,000 |
| Growth | $500 / mo | 60,000 |
| Scale | $1,000 / mo | 130,000 |
Use-or-lose each month
Credits reset to your plan's allotment at the start of each billing period — unused credits don't roll over. Burned through them early? Use Refill now on your Dashboard or Account page to start a fresh period immediately.
See your live balance and recent usage on the Dashboard, and manage or refill your plan on the Account page.
Reference
The tools
Everything you can ask for, grouped by what it does — with each tool's credit cost and an example question.
Company lookups & profiles
Find a company, then pull the enriched firmographic and service detail behind it.
lookup_company2 creditsFinds one company by domain or ID; returns a short summary — name, location, whether it's an MSP, and the company ID the other tools use. The cheap first step before a deeper pull.
Ask: “Look up simpsoncomputing.com.”
get_company_profile250 creditsThe firmographic profile: description, focus, target market, size, locations, social links, and the overall Fox Crow Maturity Level (FCML) band.
Ask: “Give me the full profile for this company.”
get_company_services100 creditsThe managed services the company offers, mapped to a standard list of MSP services, each with a category.
Ask: “What services does this MSP offer?”
get_detected_vendors150 creditsThe third-party technology vendors detected (RMM, PSA, EDR, backup…), with detection method and confidence.
Ask: “Which RMM and PSA tools does this MSP use?”
get_website_technology_mentions150 creditsThe technologies and IT services the company's own website mentions (AI-extracted from site content — mentions, not confirmed deployments).
Ask: “What's this company's tech stack?”
Scores & benchmarks
The Instinct analytic layer: how established a company looks, and how it compares.
get_maturity_score_breakdown400 creditsThe Fox Crow Maturity Level (FCML) breakdown: the overall score and 1–5 band plus each signal's sub-score. 10 signals are weighted into the overall score; tech stack, service breadth, and local market are reported for context only.
Ask: “Break down this company's maturity score.”
get_company_benchmark150 creditsHow a company ranks on one signal versus a cohort — its band plus the cohort percentile. The cohort auto-widens if it's too small.
Ask: “How does this company's LinkedIn presence compare to its peers?”
get_local_market_score100 creditsLocal market score: a 1–5 band for the strength of the market around the company, with the inputs behind it (radius, ZIP areas, population, urban/rural).
Ask: “How strong is this MSP's local market?”
Reputation, social & hiring
How a company shows up publicly — reviews, social reach, and hiring activity.
get_reputation125 creditsGoogle Maps, Glassdoor, and Indeed ratings and review counts, plus recent reviews. Reviewer identities aren't returned.
Ask: “What's this company's online reputation?”
get_social_presence100 creditsSocial reach and posting cadence: LinkedIn + Facebook follower counts and recent activity.
Ask: “How active is this MSP on social media?”
get_hiring_summary100 creditsWhether the company is hiring on Indeed and LinkedIn: active job count, per-source coverage, and the most recent postings. Distinguishes “not covered” from “not hiring.”
Ask: “Is this company hiring right now?”
Infrastructure, web & SEO
The technical footprint: email/DNS posture, site performance, and search visibility.
get_email_domain_security150 creditsEmail and domain security: SPF/DMARC/DKIM presence, TLS validity, domain age and registrar, and mail/cloud provider flags.
Ask: “How solid is this company's email security?”
get_web_performance100 creditsWebsite performance: Core Web Vitals (field data, lab fallback) and a rolled-up performance band.
Ask: “How fast is this company's website?”
get_seo_profile125 creditsSEO health: audit + web-authority scores and a curated slice of target and ranking keywords.
Ask: “What's this company's SEO health?”
get_search_rankings150 creditsWhich search queries the company appears for in its local area, with position and result type (organic vs. local map pack).
Ask: “What search terms does this MSP show up for?”
Market sizing — counts only
Size a market across the whole database. These return counts only — never company names or lists.
count_companies50 creditsCounts companies matching filters (state, size, service, vendor, maturity signals, recency, and segment — MSP vs VAR…). Recency takes one activity or a list combined with OR — jobs, LinkedIn / Facebook / social posts, blog posts (RSS/Atom), or website changes (pages edited or newly published between crawls) — within the last N days. Returns a total — and an optional breakdown by one dimension, e.g. group by segment for MSPs vs VARs. No names, no lists.
Ask: “How many MSPs vs VARs in Ohio score high on infrastructure security?”
count_companies_posting_on_social50 creditsCounts how many companies posted on LinkedIn/Facebook — optionally about a topic — in the last N days. No names, no lists.
Ask: “How many MSPs posted about ransomware on LinkedIn in the last 30 days?”
Batch, revenue & changes
Enrich a known list, estimate size, and track what's moved.
lookup_companies2 credits / match (min 2)Looks up a known list of up to 25 domains/IDs in one call; returns each match's short summary. Enrichment of a list you already have — not discovery.
Ask: “Enrich these 20 domains from my list.”
get_revenue_estimate250 creditsA modeled revenue estimate (gross revenue / ARR / MRR / endpoint ranges). A heuristic estimate from benchmarks — not collected data — so its disclaimer is always shown.
Ask: “Roughly how big is this MSP?”
get_recent_changes200 creditsWhat changed recently: rating / review-count / follower deltas plus counts of new reviews, jobs, and posts within a window (default 90 days), the current detected-vendor count, website changes (pages edited or newly published between crawls), and blog publishing (latest RSS/Atom post, 30/90-day counts, cadence band).
Ask: “What's changed for this company in the last quarter?”
Security, threat & ownership
Exploitable exposure, breach evidence, and who owns whom.
get_security_exposure200 creditsAttack surface (open ports / exposed services) plus CVEs enriched with CISA-KEV (known-exploited) and EPSS exploit probability, and vendor-level technology risk. Evidence is version-unconfirmed — software they run that has actively-exploited CVEs, not proof of a live vulnerability.
Ask: “What's this company's security exposure?”
get_ransomware_leak_site_mentions200 creditsPossible matches of the company to ransomware leak-site listings — unverified third-party claims, never a confirmed breach. Always shown with its disclaimer.
Ask: “Has this company shown up on any ransomware leak sites?”
get_ownership_structure200 creditsWhether the company is independent, part of a PE-backed roll-up, part of a corporate group, or a franchise — with corporate-family detail (GLEIF legal-entity registry, roll-up probability, franchise brand).
Ask: “Is this MSP part of a roll-up or franchise?”
Web, hosting, location & hiring signals
What the site says, where it's hosted, where the company is, and who it's hiring.
get_website_content_summary200 creditsWhat the crawled + AI-classified website says it does and sells: homepage summary, keywords, whether it shows pricing, case studies, a team, testimonials, or services, plus summaries of key pages. Emails and phone numbers are redacted.
Ask: “What does this company's website say it offers?”
get_job_postings150 creditsOpen roles across every source — the company's job board (Greenhouse / Lever / Ashby / Workable, with up to 2,000 characters of job-description text), plus LinkedIn, Indeed, and Glassdoor. Emails and phone numbers are redacted.
Ask: “What roles is this MSP hiring, with the job descriptions?”
get_ip_hosting_profile125 creditsThe primary hosting provider (cloud / CDN / managed host / self-hosted) mapped from the company's resolved public IPs, with ASN detail and geo.
Ask: “Where is this company's infrastructure hosted?”
get_accessibility_audit125 creditsAn axe-core WCAG scan of the homepage: overall pass score, violations by impact, the failed success criteria, and the top failing rules.
Ask: “How accessible is this company's website?”
get_blog_publishing_cadence100 creditsHow often the company publishes, from its RSS / Atom feeds: posts in the trailing 30 / 90 / 365 days, days since the last post, and a cadence band (active / occasional / dormant / silent). Cadence only — no post content.
Ask: “Is this MSP actively publishing content?”
get_location_profile100 creditsNormalized location: street address, city, state, ZIP, country, headquarters, latitude/longitude, alternate domains, and the Google-Maps address and phone.
Ask: “What's this company's address and phone?”
get_business_density100 creditsHow commercially dense the company's home county is, from US Census County Business Patterns — establishment / employment / payroll counts plus a national percentile and tier.
Ask: “How dense is this company's local market?”
Reference
FAQ
A few things worth knowing before you dig in.
Why do the count tools return numbers, not company lists?
count_companies and count_companies_posting_on_social are for market sizing — “how big is this segment?” — not lead export. They return totals (and optional breakdowns) but never names or lists. To pull detail on specific companies, look them up individually or with lookup_companies for a list you already have.
What does “<5” mean in a count?
Very small counts are reported as “<5” rather than an exact number. It protects against pinpointing individual companies from a narrow query — the segment exists, but it's too small to quantify precisely.
How is the revenue estimate calculated?
get_revenue_estimate is a modeled figure derived from industry benchmarks — not revenue we collected from the company. Treat it as a rough range, and note the disclaimer it always returns.
How does billing work?
Each tool call debits its credit cost from your balance the moment it runs. Your plan refills that balance to a fixed monthly allotment (use-or-lose). You can see every debit on the Dashboard, refill early from Account, and cancel anytime — cancellation takes effect at the end of your paid period, so you keep your credits until then.
The bottom line
Connect a client, ask about the MSPs in your market, and Instinct answers from a deep, current profile of each one — metered by the credit so you only pay for what you pull.