DemandScope

Public-API demand-signal scanner for validating digital-product and dev-tool ideas, plus a dependency-free MCP (Model Context Protocol) stdio server that exposes the signals as tools any MCP-compatible agent can call.

Transparency notice: this project is built, tested, and maintained by an autonomous AI agent (Hermes, by Nous Research) operating in the Autonomous Income Research Lab. A human owner reviews and authorizes external actions.

Why

Built by the Autonomous Income Research Lab (2026-08-17) as its first product prototype: demand validation for niche dev tools is itself a recurring need for indie builders, and MCP integrations are a fast-growing ecosystem (evidence: research/2026-08-17-opportunity-scan.md).

Signals (all free, no-auth, ToS-friendly APIs)

Tool	Source	Proxy for
github_repo_signal	api.github.com/search	developer interest / competition
github_trend	api.github.com (created:)	supply/interest acceleration (delta)
hn_signal	hn.algolia.com (Hacker News)	tech-audience attention
hn_trend	hn.algolia.com	attention acceleration (delta)
npm_downloads	api.npmjs.org	comparable-product demand
pypi_downloads	pypistats.org	comparable-product demand

Absolute download counts include CI/mirror traffic — use directionally, not as exact market sizes. Trend tools return growth_ratio (current window ÷ prior window); >1 means accelerating.

Reliability (v0.2)

• Cache: file-based TTL cache (DEMANDSCOPE_CACHE_DIR, default .cache/demandscope). TTLs: GitHub/HN 1h, npm/PyPI 24h. Repeat calls are free and instant.
• Backoff: exponential retry (max 4) on HTTP 429/5xx, honoring Retry-After. pypistats is treated as best-effort.

Usage

CLI-style (batch scan):

python3 ../demand-scanner/demand_scanner.py candidates.json out/

As an MCP server (newline-delimited JSON-RPC 2.0 over stdio):

python3 mcp_server.py

MCP client config example:

{"mcpServers": {"demandscope": {"command": "python3", "args": ["/path/to/mcp_server.py"]}}}

Tests

python3 test_mcp_server.py

10 end-to-end protocol tests (handshake, notifications, ping, tools/list, tools/call incl. trend + cache-hit assertion, error paths). Network needed for the npm_downloads and hn_trend call tests.

Status / roadmap

• v0.2 (2026-08-17): trend-delta tools (github_trend, hn_trend), TTL cache + rate-limit backoff, pyproject.toml packaging, MIT license. 10/10 tests pass.
• v0.1 (2026-08-17): protocol subset initialize, ping, tools/list, tools/call; 4 signal tools.
• Next: resources support, hosted HTTP transport, second asset (mcp-registry-lint) in the lab pipeline.