Scout Intel MCP

Scout MCP
Business & Market Intelligence for AI Agents

Google for AI agents — instead of web pages, it returns clean, structured JSON that agents can reason over.

Scout MCP gives any AI agent instant access to structured business intelligence, market research, and competitive analysis. It aggregates data from DuckDuckGo, NewsAPI, Wikipedia, web scraping, and social profiles into Pydantic-validated JSON responses with per-source confidence breakdowns and data quality grades.

Table of Contents

• Quick Install
• The 6 Intelligence Tools
• Data Quality Grades
• Confidence Breakdown
• Full API Reference
• Example Responses
• Architecture
• Configuration
• Pricing & Rate Limits
• Self-Hosting
• Docker
• Tech Stack
• Data Sources
• Contributing

Quick Install

Claude Desktop

Add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "scout-mcp": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "scout_mcp.mcp_server"],
      "cwd": "/path/to/scout-mcp/src",
      "env": {
        "NEWS_API_KEY": "your-newsapi-key"
      }
    }
  }
}

Cursor

Add to Cursor Settings > MCP:

{
  "scout-mcp": {
    "command": "python",
    "args": ["-m", "scout_mcp.mcp_server"],
    "cwd": "/path/to/scout-mcp/src",
    "env": {
      "NEWS_API_KEY": "your-newsapi-key"
    }
  }
}

VS Code (Copilot MCP)

Add to .vscode/mcp.json:

{
  "servers": {
    "scout-mcp": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "scout_mcp.mcp_server"],
      "cwd": "/path/to/scout-mcp/src",
      "env": {
        "NEWS_API_KEY": "your-newsapi-key"
      }
    }
  }
}

pip (self-hosted)

pip install scout-mcp
scout-mcp  # starts STDIO server for MCP clients

The 6 Intelligence Tools

Data Quality Grades

Every response includes a data_quality_grade — a letter grade that lets agents instantly assess intelligence reliability:

How Agents Should Use Grades

result = scout_company("Stripe")

if result["data_quality_grade"] in ("A+", "A"):
    # High confidence — safe to make decisions on this data
    proceed_with_analysis(result)
elif result["data_quality_grade"] == "B":
    # Good but verify key claims
    proceed_with_caveats(result)
else:
    # C/D/F — supplement with additional sources
    request_more_data(result)

Confidence Breakdown

Beyond the letter grade, every response includes a confidence_breakdown dict showing per-source reliability:

{
  "confidence": 0.86,
  "data_quality_grade": "A",
  "confidence_breakdown": {
    "duckduckgo": {
      "score": 0.60,
      "reason": "8 results found"
    },
    "company_website": {
      "score": 0.90,
      "reason": "scraped stripe.com, 3 data points extracted"
    },
    "wikipedia": {
      "score": 0.90,
      "reason": "page found, structured data extracted"
    },
    "newsapi": {
      "score": 0.90,
      "reason": "6 articles found"
    },
    "competitor_extraction": {
      "score": 0.80,
      "reason": "5 competitors identified"
    }
  }
}

Source Weights

Different sources carry different weights in the overall confidence calculation:

Full API Reference

Base URL

POST /api/scout/{tool_name}

Authentication

Pass your API key via the X-Api-Key header:

curl -X POST /api/scout/company \
  -H "X-Api-Key: your-key-here" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name": "Stripe"}'

No key = free tier (50 requests/day).

Health & Info

Tool Endpoints

POST /api/scout/company

Research any company.

Response fields: name, domain, description, industry, founded, headquarters, employee_range, funding, tech_stack, social_profiles, recent_news, top_competitors, key_people, confidence, confidence_breakdown, data_quality_grade, data_freshness, sources_used, sources_failed

POST /api/scout/market

Research any market or industry.

Response fields: market_name, query, depth, market_size, market_size_projections, cagr, key_players, trends, growth_drivers, risks, source_links, confidence, confidence_breakdown, data_quality_grade

POST /api/scout/competitors

Find and analyze competitors.

Response fields: target, competitors (array of {name, domain, positioning, pricing, strengths, weaknesses, key_differentiator}), market_positioning_summary, confidence, confidence_breakdown, data_quality_grade

POST /api/scout/trends

Track trends and sentiment.

Response fields: topic, timeframe, sentiment ({score, label}), trending_direction, key_developments, related_topics, social_buzz, confidence, confidence_breakdown, data_quality_grade

POST /api/scout/product

Get intelligence on any product.

Response fields: name, category, description, pricing, ratings, features, ideal_for, alternatives, recent_updates, confidence, confidence_breakdown, data_quality_grade

POST /api/scout/person (PRO)

Research a public figure. Requires Pro tier or higher.