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 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:

{
  "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 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.

License

MIT © Whetstone Tools · support@whetstonetools.com