# CompetLab MCP Server
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> Competitive intelligence for AI agents — see where AI sends your buyers, and what to do about it.
More B2B buyers are asking AI before they Google. CompetLab monitors competitors across 6 dimensions — including **AI Visibility**, which tracks which brands ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews recommend, and **AI Sources**, the pages Perplexity and Google AI Overviews read when they answer your buyers' questions. This MCP server gives your AI agent access to all of it: dashboards, historical data, alerts, the Strategic Briefing, and the project's Strategic Tickets board.
## Supported Clients
Works with any MCP-compatible client:
- [Claude Desktop](https://claude.ai/download) / [Claude Web](https://claude.ai)
- [Claude Code](https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code)
- [Cursor](https://cursor.com)
- [VS Code (Copilot)](https://code.visualstudio.com)
- [Windsurf](https://windsurf.com)
- [Cline](https://cline.bot)
## Quick Start
Two ways to connect — pick the one that fits your setup:
| | Remote Server | Local Server |
| ------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------- |
| **Transport** | Streamable HTTP | stdio |
| **Setup** | Zero install — just add URL | `npm install && npm run build` |
| **Best for** | Most users — Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, Cline | Claude Desktop, Glama, or running the process yourself |
Get your API key: [app.competlab.com](https://app.competlab.com/register) > Organization Settings > API Keys
### Option 1: Remote Server (recommended)
**Server URL:** `https://mcp.competlab.com/mcp`
**Auth:** API key via `CL-API-Key` header (or `api_key` query parameter)
#### Claude Code
```bash
claude mcp add --transport http \
--header "CL-API-Key: YOUR_COMPETLAB_API_KEY" \
competlab https://mcp.competlab.com/mcp
```
#### Cursor
Add to `.cursor/mcp.json`:
```json
{
"mcpServers": {
"competlab": {
"url": "https://mcp.competlab.com/mcp",
"headers": {
"CL-API-Key": "YOUR_COMPETLAB_API_KEY"
}
}
}
}
```
#### VS Code
Add to `.vscode/mcp.json`:
```json
{
"inputs": [
{
"type": "promptString",
"id": "competlab-api-key",
"description": "CompetLab API Key (starts with cl_live_)",
"password": true
}
],
"servers": {
"competlab": {
"type": "http",
"url": "https://mcp.competlab.com/mcp",
"headers": {
"CL-API-Key": "${input:competlab-api-key}"
}
}
}
}
```
> Note: VS Code uses `"servers"` (not `"mcpServers"`) and supports secure input prompts via `${input:id}`.
#### Windsurf
Add to `~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json`:
```json
{
"mcpServers": {
"competlab": {
"serverUrl": "https://mcp.competlab.com/mcp",
"headers": {
"CL-API-Key": "YOUR_COMPETLAB_API_KEY"
}
}
}
}
```
> Note: Windsurf uses `"serverUrl"` (not `"url"`).
#### Cline
Add to `cline_mcp_settings.json` (or configure via Cline UI > Installed > Advanced MCP Settings):
```json
{
"mcpServers": {
"competlab": {
"url": "https://mcp.competlab.com/mcp",
"headers": {
"CL-API-Key": "YOUR_COMPETLAB_API_KEY"
},
"disabled": false
}
}
}
```
#### Claude Desktop / Claude Web
Claude Desktop and Claude Web only support URL-based auth (no custom headers). Use the `api_key` query parameter:
Go to **Settings > MCP** and add the server with this URL:
```
https://mcp.competlab.com/mcp?api_key=YOUR_COMPETLAB_API_KEY
```
### Option 2: Local Server (stdio)
Run the server locally via stdin/stdout. Useful for Claude Desktop, Glama, or environments that prefer stdio transport.
```bash
git clone https://github.com/competlab/competlab-mcp-server.git
cd competlab-mcp-server
npm install
npm run build
```
#### Claude Code
```bash
claude mcp add --transport stdio \
--env COMPETLAB_API_KEY=YOUR_COMPETLAB_API_KEY \
competlab node dist/index.js
```
#### Claude Desktop
Add to your Claude Desktop config (`claude_desktop_config.json`):
```json
{
"mcpServers": {
"competlab": {
"command": "node",
"args": ["dist/index.js"],
"cwd": "/path/to/competlab-mcp-server",
"env": {
"COMPETLAB_API_KEY": "YOUR_COMPETLAB_API_KEY"
}
}
}
}
```
#### Generic stdio
```bash
COMPETLAB_API_KEY=YOUR_COMPETLAB_API_KEY node dist/index.js
```
The server reads JSON-RPC from stdin and writes responses to stdout.
See [examples/](./examples/) for ready-to-paste config files for each client.
## What is CompetLab?
Competitive intelligence for the AI era: 14 dimensions — 6 monitored continuously, plus 8 leading-edge dimensions researched for a Strategic Briefing every month, or every two weeks on Process. The six monitored dimensions:
| Dimension | What It Tracks |
| ----------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **AI Visibility** | Which companies ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews recommend in your category, how often each is named, and where you stand |
| **AI Sources** | The pages Perplexity and Google AI Overviews read when they answer your buyers' questions, and whether you are on them |
| **Positioning** | What each company says on its homepage as the page says it, what you say that nobody else does, what changed, and what pages say about you |
| **Pricing** | What each company charges as its pricing page shows it, what typical setups cost cheapest first and where you stand, what changed, and what pages say about you |
| **Content** | Sitemap analysis, content categorization (12 categories), URL changelog, content gaps |
| **Tech & Trust** | Tech stacks, security headers (grade A-F), trust signals (26 signals in 5 categories), per-assistant AI access |
AI Visibility answers who AI recommends — which brands ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews name and recommend when your buyers ask, and whether you are in the core. AI Sources is its companion: the pages Perplexity and Google AI Overviews retrieve on the way to those answers, and whether they name you.
> [Start free trial](https://app.competlab.com/register) (14 days, no credit card) | [Learn more](https://competlab.com)
## Available Tools
**48 tools.** 40 are read-only; 3 are async-scan starters that create a scan record (`start_tech_stack_scan`, `start_trust_signals_scan`, `start_agent_adoption_scan`); 5 write to the project's Strategic Tickets board (`create_ticket`, `update_ticket`, `move_ticket`, `delete_ticket`, `add_ticket_comment`) and need a `read_write` API key.
### Projects & Competitors
| Tool | Description |
| ------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `list_projects` | List all projects with status, competitor count, and last monitored timestamp |
| `get_project` | Get project details with per-dimension monitoring freshness |
| `list_competitors` | List all monitored competitors (includes your own domain for comparison) |
| `get_competitor` | Get competitor details including monitored page URLs |
### AI Visibility
| Tool | Description |
| -------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `get_ai_visibility_dashboard` | The market map — which companies the AI models recommend in your category, and whether you are one of them — with per-model breakdowns; optionally the models' raw answers |
| `get_ai_visibility_history` | Paginated history of AI Visibility checks |
| `get_ai_visibility_check_detail` | Full detail for one check, and optionally what each model actually said — filterable by competitor, model, or prompt; an answers read comes without the summary unless you ask for it (`includeSummary`) |
| `get_ai_visibility_trend` | How the market the AI models draw has moved over a window — each company's reading now and at the start, and the difference; readable per AI model |
### AI Sources
| Tool | Description |
| ----------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `get_ai_sources_dashboard` | The pages Perplexity and Google AI Overviews read when they answer the project's buying questions, per engine — which companies each named, which pages it retrieved, and the pages naming other companies and not you |
| `get_ai_sources_history` | Paginated history of AI Sources checks |
| `get_ai_sources_check_detail` | Full detail for one AI Sources check, and optionally every answer and retrieved page — filterable by engine or question; an answers read comes without the summary unless you ask for it (`includeSummary`) |
### Positioning
| Tool | Description |
| ---------------------------- | ----------- |
| `get_positioning_dashboard` | What each company says on its homepage as the page says it, what you say that nobody else does, what changed, and what pages say about you |
| `get_positioning_history` | One row per positioning check with what it found changed, in full; filter by `since` |
| `get_positioning_run_detail` | One past positioning check in full, in the dashboard's shape |
### Pricing Intelligence
| Tool | Description |
| ------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| `get_pricing_dashboard` | What each company charges as its pricing page shows it, what typical setups cost cheapest first and where you stand, what changed, and what pages say about you |
| `get_pricing_history` | One row per pricing check with what it found changed, in full; filter by `since` |
| `get_pricing_run_detail` | One past pricing check in full, in the dashboard's shape |
### Content Intelligence
| Tool | Description |
| ------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `get_content_dashboard` | Latest sitemap analysis, content categorization, strategic URLs, gap analysis |
| `get_content_history` | Paginated history of monitoring runs |
| `get_content_run_detail` | Full data for a specific content run |
| `get_content_changelog` | Detected URL changes over time (added, removed) — filterable by competitor and category |
### Tech & Trust Profile
| Tool | Description |
| --------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| `get_tech_trust_dashboard` | Latest security headers, trust signals, tech stacks, DNS, and per-assistant AI access |
| `get_tech_trust_history` | Paginated history of monitoring runs |
| `get_tech_trust_run_detail` | Full competitor-by-competitor data for a specific run |
### Strategic Briefing
| Tool | Description |
| ---------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| `get_briefing` | Current state of the project's Strategic Briefing — what changed, what it means, and what the edition did on the board: the tickets it opened, the tickets already there it commented on, and the ones it matched instead of opening a second. Defaults to the `hub` digest; pass `sections` to open any of the 14 `deep-` sections |
| `get_briefing_history` | Past briefing editions, newest first — publication date, status and headline verdict per edition |
| `get_briefing_edition` | One past briefing edition in full, by run ID |
### Strategic Tickets
The project's board — the work the team has decided to do, with an owner, a column and a thread. The same tickets the team sees in the app, in five fixed columns: `triage`, `todo`, `in_progress`, `done`, `dismissed`. Every move in a Strategic Briefing lands here — as a new ticket in `triage`, most important first, or on the ticket already there for that work — and a later edition comments on tickets already there when it measured something about them. Every tool that takes a ticket ID also takes the ticket's number as a person writes it, `#14`. A `read` key lists and reads tickets; the tools that write need a `read_write` key. A key reads everything its organization has and works its Strategic Tickets board on any plan and after one ends; the calls that fetch or scan a site on CompetLab's side need a plan (`402 subscription_required` otherwise).
| Tool | Description |
| ----------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| `list_tickets` | A project's Strategic Tickets, a page at a time — in board order, or by priority, due date or recent activity; filterable by column, owner, label, impact, effort, due date and the edition that opened them. Every page carries the total and the count per column |
| `get_ticket` | One ticket in full — description, labels, owner, due date, effort, impact and how long its thread is |
| `create_ticket` | Open a ticket on a project's board. Needs a read_write API key |
| `update_ticket` | Change a ticket's title, description, labels, owner, due date, effort or impact. Needs a read_write API key |
| `move_ticket` | Move a ticket to another column, or reorder it — to the top or the bottom, or between two named tickets; the answer says where it landed. Needs a read_write API key |
| `delete_ticket` | Delete a ticket and its thread. Needs a read_write API key |
| `list_ticket_comments` | A ticket's comment thread, oldest first — each entry says whether a person, an API key or a Strategic Briefing wrote it |
| `add_ticket_comment` | Add a Markdown comment to a ticket's thread. Needs a read_write API key |
| `list_ticket_labels` | A project's ticket labels — each a name and a colour |
| `list_ticket_assignees` | Who a ticket can be assigned to — the organization's current members, by name and ID |
### Alerts & Schedules
| Tool | Description |
| ---------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| `list_alerts` | Competitive change alerts — filterable by dimension, severity, level, and competitor |
| `list_schedules` | Monitoring schedules for all 6 monitored dimensions, with status and intervals |
### Free Tools (no project setup required)
Run these against any public domain — no `projectId` needed. The sync tools return immediately; the async scans return a `scanId` you poll every 5–10 seconds.
| Tool | Description |
| --------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| `check_sitemap` | Live sitemap analysis — discovers URLs, categorizes them by section, and reports depth, freshness, and per-category counts |
| `check_ai_crawlers` | Live check of which AI assistants (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Overviews, Gemini Apps) can fetch a site's pages, read from its robots.txt |
| `start_tech_stack_scan` | Start async tech-stack detection (117 rules: tech / growth / engagement). Returns `scanId` |
| `get_tech_stack_scan` | Poll a tech-stack scan by `scanId` — returns detected technologies with confidence scores when complete |
| `start_trust_signals_scan` | Start async trust-signals analysis (34 signals across enterprise readiness, validation, social proof, authority, risk). Returns `scanId` |
| `get_trust_signals_scan` | Poll a trust-signals scan by `scanId` — returns per-signal verdicts and tier verdict when complete |
| `start_agent_adoption_scan` | Start async Agent Adoption Check (25 checks: discoverability, access, readability, agent endpoints). Returns `scanId` |
| `get_agent_adoption_scan` | Poll an Agent Adoption Check by `scanId` — returns complete results when finished |
| `fetch_url` | Fetch any URL with JS rendering and bot-protection handling. Returns body, headers, cleanStats. Optional `cleanHtml` strips noise for LLM token-cost savings. 60 req/min per API key |
All paginated tools accept `page` and `limit` parameters. Check `pagination.hasMore` in the response to fetch more pages.
The AI Visibility and AI Sources dashboards and check details, the AI Visibility history, and the Tech & Trust dashboard answer in a compact view by default: the market map, the pages list and the brands list come one page at a time, with your own row — and, on the market map, every tracked competitor's — always on the page and a `*Page` object (`offset`, `limit`, `total`, `hasMore`) saying how many rows there are. Pass `view=full` for every row in one response. Every one of these responses opens with `readingGuide`, the reading rules for its fields.
Responses pass through from the CompetLab API unchanged, and the server's instructions tell your agent how to read them — above all, `null` means CompetLab did not measure a value, never zero or "no".
## Example Prompts
Once connected, try asking your AI agent:
- **"Which companies do the AI models recommend in my category — and am I one of them?"**
- **"Which pages do Perplexity and Google AI Overviews read for my buyers' questions that name my competitors but not me?"**
- **"What changed on my competitors' pricing pages this week?"**
- **"Show me the strategic briefing — what should I fix first?"**
- **"Which tickets did the latest briefing open, and where do they stand on our board?"**
- **"How has the AI market map moved over the last 3 months?"**
- **"Compare content strategies across all my tracked competitors"**
- **"What critical alerts fired in the last 7 days?"**
- **"Which competitors have better security headers than us?"**
- **"Run a tech-stack scan on stripe.com — what are they using?"**
- **"Which AI assistants can reach openai.com, according to its robots.txt?"**
- **"Fetch g2.com/some-listing with cleanHtml and summarize the page"**
See [examples/prompts.md](./examples/prompts.md) for more prompts organized by use case.
## Authentication
### Getting an API key
1. Sign up at [app.competlab.com/register](https://app.competlab.com/register) (free 14-day trial, no credit card)
2. Go to **Organization Settings > API Keys**
3. Create a new key — it starts with `cl_live_`
### Two authentication methods
| Method | When to use | Example |
| ----------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------- |
| **`CL-API-Key` header** | Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, Cline | `CL-API-Key: cl_live_...` |
| **`api_key` query parameter** | Claude Desktop, Claude Web, clients without custom header support | `?api_key=cl_live_...` |
One API key covers your entire organization. Most tools are read-only; the three `start_*_scan` tools create scan records under your account (no edits to existing data), and the five Strategic Tickets write tools change the project's board — they need a `read_write` key, and a `read` key is refused on them. The `fetch_url` tool is rate-limited at 60 req/min per API key (tighter than the 1000/min default for other free tools).
### Pricing
MCP access comes with every CompetLab plan and with the free 14-day trial.
## Troubleshooting
| Issue | Fix |
| ---------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Connection refused / timeout | Verify the URL is exactly `https://mcp.competlab.com/mcp` with no trailing slash |
| `api_key_missing` error | Ensure you're passing the key as `CL-API-Key` header (remote) or `COMPETLAB_API_KEY` env var (stdio) |
| `api_key_invalid` error | Keys must start with `cl_live_` and be exactly 40 characters |
| Transport not supported | Use the remote HTTP server, or switch to the local stdio server |
## Links
- [MCP Server Documentation](https://competlab.com/developers/mcp)
- [REST API Reference](https://competlab.com/developers/api)
- [TypeScript SDK](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@competlab/sdk) (`npm install @competlab/sdk`)
- [Privacy Policy](https://competlab.com/privacy-policy)
- [Start Free Trial](https://app.competlab.com/register)
## Support
- Bug reports: [GitHub Issues](https://github.com/competlab/competlab-mcp-server/issues)
- Email: [support@competlab.com](mailto:support@competlab.com)
- Documentation: [competlab.com/developers](https://competlab.com/developers/mcp)
## License
MIT (covers documentation and configs in this repo) — see [LICENSE](./LICENSE)
The CompetLab MCP server and platform are commercial software. See [competlab.com/terms-and-conditions](https://competlab.com/terms-and-conditions).
---
Built by the [CompetLab](https://competlab.com) team. Competitive intelligence for the AI era.
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