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.

Powered by the Whetstone actors on Apify. All data is official U.S. government public-record data.

Tools

| Tool | What it does | |---|---| | business_search | Official Secretary of State business registration (KYB) across 28 states | | new_business_filings | Newly registered businesses from 16 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:

{
  "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:

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

Notes & limits

• Heavy queries can be slow. Business search across all 28 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.

License

MIT © Whetstone Tools · [email protected]