Magellan Data Spotlight README
The full upstream README, mirrored here for reference. Install config, tool schemas, adoption signals, and an original overview live on the Magellan Data Spotlight listing page.
Magellan Data MCP
Corporate ownership intelligence for AI agents. Connect Claude, Cursor, or any MCP-compatible client to Magellan Data's Spotlight platform and ask who owns whom — parent companies, PE backing, corporate families, and portfolio siblings — over lists of thousands of companies at a time.
Hosted server. No install. Connect with an API key, or via OAuth from hosted connectors like claude.ai.
That's an MCP endpoint, not a web page — paste it into your client's config, not your browser. Opening it directly returns an error, which is the correct behaviour for every hosted MCP server.
Try asking
Once connected, these all work in plain language:
"Read
accounts.xlsxand tell me which of these companies are PE-backed, and by whom."
"We just closed Moosend. Find every other company owned by the same PE firm — those are our warm expansion targets."
"Which of my 200 accounts are subsidiaries of a larger parent? Append the parent company to the spreadsheet and save it."
"Map the full corporate family under Constant Contact's parent so I can see the sister companies I'm not covering."
The agent handles the whole pipeline — submitting the batch, polling until the runs
finish, checking the price, and joining results back to your original file by input_url.
Quick start
1. Get an API key. Sign up at magellandata.io and generate a
key from the Spotlight dashboard. Keys look like mgln_sk_live_…. Every key carries its own
credit balance, and usage is billed to the key that made the call.
2. Connect your client.
Claude Code
Cursor
Add to ~/.cursor/mcp.json (or .cursor/mcp.json in a project):
VS Code
Add to .vscode/mcp.json — this prompts for the key rather than storing it in the file:
Any other MCP client
The server speaks Streamable HTTP and is stateless. Point any compliant client at
https://spotlight-mcp.magellandata.io/mcp with an Authorization: Bearer <key> header.
3. Verify. Ask your agent: "Check my Magellan Data credit balance." If it comes back with a number, you're connected. That call is free.
Authentication
Two methods are supported; use whichever fits how you're connecting.
API keys (mgln_sk_live_…) — for local and CLI clients like Claude Code, Cursor, or
anything you configure by hand. Generate a key in the
Spotlight dashboard and pass it as a Bearer token in the
Authorization header, as shown in the quick start above. Usage is billed to the key
that made the call.
OAuth 2.1 — for hosted connectors such as claude.ai and ChatGPT. There's nothing OAuth-specific to set up on your side: when you add the connector (from the directory, or as a custom connector where the platform holds the client credentials), you'll be sent to Spotlight to sign in and approve access — the usual "connect, sign in, allow" flow — and the client handles tokens from there. Usage is billed to the Spotlight account you approved with.
Either way, every request is authenticated and attributed to one Spotlight account — the two methods differ only in how the credential reaches the server.
What you can look up
| Output type | Answers | Cost |
|---|---|---|
parent_companies | Is this company a subsidiary, and of whom? | 70 credits per URL where a parent is found — no match, no charge |
pe_ownership | Is it PE-backed, by which firm, and what deal type? | 70 credits per URL found to be PE-backed — no match, no charge |
corporate_families | Every subsidiary and sister company under a shared parent | 20 credits per record returned (min. 1 per URL) |
pe_portfolios | Every company held by the same PE firm | 20 credits per record returned (min. 1 per URL) |
For parent_companies and pe_ownership you pay only for hits: a URL where nothing is
discovered costs nothing, so 70 credits × your URL count is the ceiling, not the bill.
The other two are priced per output record. Either way the exact price is known once a
run completes — the agent reads it off the run and tells you before downloading.
How credits work
This is the part worth understanding, because it's what keeps an autonomous agent from quietly burning your balance:
- Submitting a batch is free. So is starting the processing runs, polling their status, and checking your balance.
- Credits are charged at exactly one point:
download_run. Nothing before it costs anything. - The agent surfaces the price first. Every run carries a
pricefield, and the server instructs connected clients to state that number and wait for you before downloading. - Re-downloads are free, forever. Once a run is purchased it stays purchased. If a download link expires, just ask again — no second charge.
If you'd rather not think about it: everything up to and including "how much will this cost" is free, and the agent will ask.
Tools
| Tool | Charges credits? | What it does |
|---|---|---|
check_credits | No | Your available balance. Doubles as a connection check. |
submit_batch | No | Create a batch from 1–5,000 company URLs. Returns a batch_id. |
process_batch | No | Start async runs — one per output type. Returns immediately. |
list_runs | No | Every run for a batch: status, price, purchase state. |
get_run_status | No | One run's status and price. Poll this until completed. |
download_run | Yes | Buys the results. Returns a short download link plus a preview. |
The flow is always submit → process → poll → download. Results come back as a short
download link (https://api.magellandata.io/dl/…, valid for 1 hour) rather than inline,
so a 2-million-row result set never touches your agent's context window. The link needs
no auth header — hand it straight to curl, pandas.read_csv, or a browser. In hosted
chat environments without general internet access (like the claude.ai connector), the
assistant presents it as a clickable link for you to open rather than fetching it itself.
There's also a magellan_playbook prompt — a GTM strategy guide covering expansion-
target ranking, deal_type interpretation, and MSA-timing triggers. In Claude Code it shows
up as a slash command under the magellan-data server.
Working example
examples/quickstart.py runs the full pipeline against the REST
API directly — useful for understanding what the agent is doing under the hood, or for
wiring Magellan Data into a non-agentic pipeline.
examples/accounts.csv and
accounts.xlsx are a 12-row fixture you can point an
agent at without supplying your own data. The companies span independents, acquired
subsidiaries, and PE-backed businesses, so each output type returns something. Enriching all
twelve costs at most 840 credits per match-based output type (only the companies where
something is found are charged) — cheap enough to validate the pipeline for real.
It stops and asks before the download step, so you can run it end to end without spending credits until you mean to.
examples/PROMPTS.md has a walkthrough of agent prompts in
increasing order of ambition, with the expected cost of each noted up front.
Skills
The skills/ directory holds task-focused playbooks that turn raw tool output
into a finished deliverable — a ranked target list, a coverage map, an enriched
spreadsheet — instead of JSON. Clients that support skills can load them from this repo;
clients that don't can still be pointed at the markdown directly.
| Skill | Produces |
|---|---|
account-expansion | Ranked warm-intro targets from a closed-won account's ownership graph |
pe-portfolio-map | Coverage map of a PE firm's portfolio against your existing accounts |
ownership-enrichment | Your account list, enriched in place with parent and PE-backing columns |
Repository contents
To use the manifests locally:
Then point your client at the repo root or the specific manifest path.
Troubleshooting
The endpoint URL shows an error in my browser.
Expected. /mcp speaks JSON-RPC over POST; the transport spec reserves GET on that path for
opening an event stream, so a server like this one that doesn't offer streams answers with
405. There's nothing to see there. To check the server is actually up, ask your agent to
call check_credits — that's free and exercises the whole auth path.
My client connects but lists no tools.
Almost always an auth problem rather than a transport one. Confirm the header is
Authorization: Bearer mgln_sk_live_... with the Bearer prefix, and that the key is
active in the Spotlight dashboard.
A download link says it has expired (HTTP 410).
Download links last an hour. Call download_run again for a fresh one — re-downloads are
free.
A run has been processing for a long time.
Large batches take minutes, not seconds. Poll every 10–30 seconds rather than in a tight
loop. If a run sits past 20 minutes, open an issue with the run_id.
Notes and limits
- Batch size: up to 5,000 URLs per batch. Larger lists should be chunked; the agent will do this if you ask.
- Timing: large runs take minutes, not seconds. Polling every 10–30 seconds is the right cadence and the server instructions say so.
- Overlapping inputs: if two input companies share a parent or a PE firm, you're charged
for both inputs. Every output row carries
input_url, so deduplicating client-side is trivial. - Auth: every request carries either an API key or an OAuth token (see Authentication), so usage is always attributed to the right Spotlight account.
Roadmap
- Listing in the official MCP Registry and downstream directories
last_verifiedtimestamps on ownership records
Issues and feature requests are welcome — open one on this repo.
Support
- API documentation: docs.magellandata.io
- Bugs and requests: open an issue
- Data quality problems: support@magellandata.io
- Commercial questions: magellandata.io
License
MIT — this repository. The Spotlight API itself is a commercial service governed by the Magellan Data terms of service.