whetstone-mcp

An MCP server for U.S. public-records data — so AI agents and MCP clients (Claude Desktop, Cursor, etc.) can look up business records, screen names against government watchlists, and pull federal awards directly.

Tools

Tool	What it does
`business_search`	Official Secretary of State business registration (KYB) across 25 states
`new_business_filings`	Newly registered businesses from 10 states, windowed by date
`watchlist_screen`	Screen a name against 12 federal watchlists (OFAC, BIS, State Dept)
`federal_awards`	A company's federal contracts, grants, and loans (USAspending.gov)

Setup

You need a free Apify API token (apify.com → Settings → API & Integrations). Runs bill to your Apify account under pay-per-result pricing (~$2 per 1,000 result rows; the free tier covers light use).

Claude Desktop

Add to claude_desktop_config.json:

config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "whetstone": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "whetstone-mcp"],
      "env": { "APIFY_TOKEN": "apify_api_your_token_here" }
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. The four tools then appear and the agent can call them.

Any MCP client

Run the server over stdio:

bash

APIFY_TOKEN=apify_api_... npx -y whetstone-mcp

Notes & limits

Heavy queries can be slow. Business search across all 25 states (or filings across all 10) runs synchronously and may approach the 300-second limit. Pass a states subset for faster, cheaper runs.
Name-based matching. Watchlist and federal-award results are matched by name and are not identity confirmation — verify a hit against the official source before acting. Nothing here is legal, compliance, or financial advice.
A free, interactive version of the combined lookup is at whetstonetools.com/company-check, and there's also an n8n community node.

Whetstone MCP README