Alion: company, startup and market intelligence

Search companies

search_companies

Read-onlyIdempotent

Find companies in Alion's live company graph (millions of companies worldwide, each identified by its own web domain) by what they are, what they build with, how they are funded and how they grow: name or domain prefix, country of an office, size band, industry, founding year, startup or not, funding stage, rounds raised since a date, minimum round size, a named investor or accelerator, a technology the company uses (read from its own job postings), ATS vendor, whether it is hiring now, and the growth-signal level (A = strong momentum, B = active, C = some activity) or AI-adoption level. Use it for market maps, competitor and prospect lists, startup and deal-flow scouting, technology-adoption research or supplier search. Each row carries the headquarters, founding year, startup verdict, the newest venture round and the total raised on file, open jobs and jobs added in 30 days (a live growth signal), and when the site was last verified. Default order is by most recent hiring activity; sort=recent_funding, open_jobs, score, newest or name. For lookalikes of one company call similar_companies; for one company in depth call get_company. Paginated with an opaque cursor. Staffing agencies are excluded unless include_agencies=true. detail=compact rows cost the least, and connected assistants (Claude, ChatGPT) get a daily allowance of compact reads free. Docs: https://alion.io/developers/docs

Input Schema

Name	Required	Description	Default
`ats`	No	ATS vendor name, e.g. "Greenhouse", "Lever", "Workday", "SmartRecruiters".
`size`	No	Employee band or a comma list of bands: 1-10, 11-50, 51-200, 201-500, 501-1000, 1001-5000, 5000+.
`sort`	No	recent_hiring (default), recent_funding (the newest matching round first), open_jobs, score, newest (newest in the graph), name.	recent_hiring
`limit`	No	Companies per page (1-50, default 20).
`query`	No	Name prefix ("Acme") or domain prefix ("acme.").
`cursor`	No	Opaque cursor from a previous response (next_cursor).
`detail`	No	"compact" keeps id, name, domain, industry, size, headquarters country, founding year, open jobs and the newest round.	standard
`hiring`	No	true = has open roles now, false = none open.
`sector`	No	A frontier-tech sector (one or a comma list): biotech, medtech, space, aerospace, semiconductors, energy, climate, defense, robotics, quantum, automotive, science - the companies whose core business it is; with hiring=true or sort=recent_hiring, who is hiring in it now.
`country`	No	ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code or country name of an office on file.
`startup`	No	true = companies Alion classifies as startups (confirmed or likely), false = everyone else.
`ai_level`	No	Minimum AI-adoption level from the roles the company hires for.
`industry`	No	Industry or segment by name, e.g. "Fintech", "Healthcare", "E-commerce".
`investor`	No	A fund, angel network or accelerator by domain ("sequoiacap.com", "ycombinator.com") or name: the companies in its portfolio and the rounds it is named in.
`founded_to`	No	Founded in this year or earlier.
`technology`	No	A technology the company requires in its job postings, named exactly (one or a comma list), e.g. "Snowflake", "Kubernetes".
`founded_from`	No	Founded in this year or later, e.g. 2022.
`hiring_level`	No	Minimum growth-signal level from its hiring (A is the strongest).
`raised_since`	No	Only companies with a matching round announced after this point: an ISO date ("2026-01-01") or a window ("90d", "6m", "1y"). Without funding_stage it means any venture round.
`funding_stage`	No	One round or a comma list: pre_seed, seed, angel, series_a ... series_h, venture, grant, debt, private_equity, ipo, acquired; or a group: early (pre-seed to series A), growth (series B to H), venture (any venture round). Matches companies with such a round on file.
`min_open_jobs`	No	Only companies with at least this many open job postings now.
`min_round_usd`	No	Only companies with a matching round of at least this many US dollars.
`include_agencies`	No	Include staffing and recruiting agencies (left out by default).

Output Schema

Name	Required	Description
`meta`	No	Quota and credit standing after this call.
`items`	Yes
`has_more`	Yes
`returned`	Yes
`warnings`	No	Arguments that were ignored or matched nothing, with what to try instead.
`next_cursor`	No	Pass back as cursor, other arguments unchanged.
`filters_applied`	No	How each argument was understood.

Schema Changelog

Changes observed during successful MCP inspections.

Changed1 schema field changedOct 23, 2026

changedInput schema / properties / sector / description

Previous value: -"A frontier-tech sector (one or a comma list): biotech, medtech, space, aerospace, semiconductors, energy, climate, defense, robotics, quantum - the companies whose core business it is; with hiring=true or sort=recent_hiring, who is hiring in it now."New value: +"A frontier-tech sector (one or a comma list): biotech, medtech, space, aerospace, semiconductors, energy, climate, defense, robotics, quantum, automotive, science - the companies whose core business it is; with hiring=true or sort=recent_hiring, who is hiring in it now."

Changed1 schema field changedOct 21, 2026

addedInput schema / properties / sector

Added value: +{
+  "description": "A frontier-tech sector (one or a comma list): biotech, medtech, space, aerospace, semiconductors, energy, climate, defense, robotics, quantum - the companies whose core business it is; with hiring=true or sort=recent_hiring, who is hiring in it now.",
+  "type": "string"
+}

Changed1 schema field changedOct 20, 2026
- changedOutput schema / properties / filters_applied / properties
```
Previous value: -[]New value: +{}
```

Changed1 schema field changedOct 18, 2026

addedOutput schema / properties / items / items / properties / claimed

Added value: +{
+  "description": "The company claimed its page: a person with a confirmed address on its domain manages it on Alion",
+  "type": [
+    "boolean",
+    "null"
+  ]
+}

First observedOct 15, 2026

TDQS

A4.6/5.0

Behavior4/5

Does the description disclose side effects, auth requirements, rate limits, or destructive behavior?

Annotations already cover read-only, idempotent, non-destructive semantics, but the description adds a lot beyond them: opaque-cursor pagination, default ordering by recent hiring, agency exclusion, and the cost/free-allowance implication of detail=compact. It doesn't mention rate limits or result-count caps beyond the schema's limit maximum, which keeps it just short of a 5.

Agents need to know what a tool does to the world before calling it. Descriptions should go beyond structured annotations to explain consequences.

Conciseness4/5

Is the description appropriately sized, front-loaded, and free of redundancy?

Front-loaded with purpose, then use cases, then behavior, then routing — good ordering. The dense filter enumeration is long but each clause carries distinct capability information; only minor compression could be gained.

Shorter descriptions cost fewer tokens and are easier for agents to parse. Every sentence should earn its place.

Completeness5/5

Given the tool's complexity, does the description cover enough for an agent to succeed on first attempt?

For a 23-parameter search tool with an output schema, the description covers scoping, ordering defaults, pagination, exclusions, cost trade-offs, and sibling routing. Nothing an agent needs in order to call it correctly is missing, and the output schema handles return-value detail.

Complex tools with many parameters or behaviors need more documentation. Simple tools need less. This dimension scales expectations accordingly.

Parameters4/5

Does the description clarify parameter syntax, constraints, interactions, or defaults beyond what the schema provides?

Schema coverage is 100% so the schema already documents all 23 parameters, yet the description adds cross-parameter semantics: sector scoping changes meaning of hiring=true/sort=recent_hiring, raised_since means any venture round when funding_stage is absent, technology is read from job postings, and A/B/C levels are defined. These are genuine additions beyond the field descriptions, though not every parameter gets extra context.

Input schemas describe structure but not intent. Descriptions should explain non-obvious parameter relationships and valid value ranges.

Purpose5/5

Does the description clearly state what the tool does and how it differs from similar tools?

States a specific verb+resource (find companies in Alion's live company graph) and enumerates the dimensions the search covers (name/domain, country, size, industry, funding, technology, hiring). It explicitly distinguishes itself from siblings by naming similar_companies and get_company for their distinct cases.

Agents choose between tools based on descriptions. A clear purpose with a specific verb and resource helps agents select the right tool.

Usage Guidelines5/5

Does the description explain when to use this tool, when not to, or what alternatives exist?

Gives concrete use cases (market maps, competitor lists, deal-flow scouting, tech-adoption research) and explicit routing rules to the alternatives for lookalikes and single-company depth. It also states a default exclusion (staffing agencies) and how to override it, which is real when-to-use guidance.

Agents often have multiple tools that could apply. Explicit usage guidance like "use X instead of Y when Z" prevents misuse.

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