stack-and-dns-mcp
Detects Cloudflare as a domain's CDN/hosting/WAF layer during tech-stack inspection and reports it in the site's technology profile and history (e.g. adoption or removal of Cloudflare over time).
Identifies Google Workspace as a domain's email provider from MX/DNS records during email-infrastructure verification, and flags Google-related analytics and tag tooling in the tech-stack audit.
Detects Google Tag Manager (and related analytics/tag tooling) on a homepage during tech-stack inspection, surfacing it under analytics & tags findings and tracking additions or removals across historic scans.
Recognizes HubSpot in the marketing automation/CRM portion of a site's detected stack, and can answer reverse-lookup queries for which domains in an operator-supplied list are running HubSpot.
Identifies Shopify as a domain's e-commerce platform in the tech-stack audit, reports the platform in the stack highlights, tracks when a site adopts or drops Shopify, and supports reverse lookup of which domains in a supplied list are running Shopify.
Click on "Deploy Server".
Wait a few minutes for the server to deploy. Once ready, it will show a "Started" state.
In the chat, type
@followed by the MCP server name and your instructions, e.g., "@stack-and-dns-mcpaudit stripe.com's tech stack and email security"
That's it! The server will respond to your query, and you can continue using it as needed.
Here is a step-by-step guide with screenshots.
stack-and-dns-mcp
A monetized Model Context Protocol server that inspects any public domain for AI agents. Give it a domain and it returns the company's web technology stack, its email deliverability and DNS health (MX / SPF / DKIM / DMARC / MTA-STS / TLS-RPT / BIMI), and its HTTPS security posture, all as strictly-typed JSON with 0-100 scores and remediation-ready findings.
Built for Cursor, Claude Desktop, Claude Code, autonomous SDR bots and research agents. Runs locally over stdio with zero configuration, or as a hosted Streamable HTTP / SSE service that meters usage per API key and can sell prepaid credits through HTTP 402 payment challenges (Stripe hosted checkout or x402 / Machine Payments Protocol stablecoin payments) or API key subscriptions through a self-serve signup page.
Every scan is remembered, so it can also tell you what changed: domain_history shows when a
company adopted or dropped a tool or weakened its DMARC policy, bulk checks work through whole
lead lists (as MCP tools or a CSV-friendly REST API), watched domains raise alerts, by poll or
signed webhook, when their email posture or stack changes, and find_domains_using answers "who
runs Klaviyo?" from a robots.txt-respecting crawl of a domain list you supply.
Contents
Related MCP server: trust-score
What the tools return
Tool | What it does | Cost |
| Fetches the homepage (3 s per attempt, at most 6 s with its TLS and | 1 credit |
| Live DNS: MX with provider identification, SPF with recursive include expansion and lookup counting, DKIM discovery across 86 common selectors (key type/length), DMARC with org-domain fallback and report-destination authorization, MTA-STS policy fetch, TLS-RPT, BIMI, disposable-domain detection. Returns severity-sorted risks and a deliverability score. | 1 credit |
| Runs both concurrently and aggregates an overall health score (email 40 %, security 35 %, infrastructure maturity 25 %) with merged findings and highlights. | 2 credits |
| Returns what earlier scans recorded about a domain without scanning again: current and past technologies with first-seen and last-seen dates, the latest email posture, and a dated change log (tool added or removed, DMARC weakened, DKIM key lost, MX provider changed). Available when storage is enabled. | 1 credit |
| Checks a whole lead list (email, tech or audit per domain) as a background job with paged results and CSV export. Also available as a REST API. | per accepted domain, at the single-domain price; polling is free |
| Re-checks watched domains on a schedule and raises alerts when their email posture or technology stack changes, readable with | included in plans; prepaid callers pay per scheduled check |
| Reverse lookup: which domains run a technology (Shopify, Klaviyo, HubSpot...), from a polite background crawl of an operator-supplied domain list. | 2 credits per page; listing is free |
Every successful result is delivered twice: as pretty-printed JSON in content[0].text (for
clients that only read text) and as structuredContent validated against a Zod output schema.
Failures never crash the server; they come back as isError results with no structuredContent,
carrying { "error": { "code", "message", "retryable", "details" } } in content[0].text and in
_meta.error. Arguments that do not match a tool's input schema (an empty domain, a wrong type, a
missing field) and unknown tool names are rejected by the MCP SDK before the tool runs, with a
plain-text isError result (MCP error -32602: ...) that has no error object and is not charged;
fix the arguments rather than retrying unchanged.
Example (abbreviated) comprehensive_audit highlights for a real store:
Platform: Shopify on Cloudflare (10 technologies detected).
Analytics & tags: Elevar, Google Tag Manager, RudderStack.
Go-to-market stack: Attentive.
Security: B (81/100); TLS valid, HSTS on, CSP off.
Email: Google Workspace; SPF fail; DKIM found; DMARC p=reject (score 92/100, A).Quick start (local, stdio)
Requirements: Node.js 22.13+. Stored scans, the shared credit ledger and every feature built on
them (domain_history, bulk checks, monitoring, reverse lookup) use the built-in node:sqlite
module. When it cannot be loaded, or the database cannot be opened, the server still starts with
the live inspection tools only and logs why.
git clone https://github.com/Mewnah/stack-and-dns-mcp.git
cd stack-and-dns-mcp
npm install
npm run buildTry it without any MCP client:
npm run smoke -- shopify.com # comprehensive audit
npm run smoke -- shopify.com --tech # tech stack only
npm run smoke -- shopify.com --email # email infrastructure onlyOpen it in the MCP Inspector:
npm run inspectorOr run the server directly (stdio is the default transport):
node dist/index.jsLogs always go to stderr as JSON lines; stdout is reserved for the MCP protocol.
Client configuration
The usage file and the database default to ./data/usage.json and ./data/stackdns.db, relative
to the directory the server is started in. MCP clients usually start servers somewhere else (an
application folder, /, whichever project is open), so the examples below set both to absolute
paths. Otherwise the data lands in a different place per client, or storage is switched off with
only a log warning when that directory is not writable.
Cursor
A project-level file is included at .cursor/mcp.json. Cursor runs
project servers from the workspace root, so the relative paths work after npm run build.
For a global install use absolute paths, with a checkout or with the published package:
{
"mcpServers": {
"stack-and-dns": {
"command": "node",
"args": ["/absolute/path/to/stack-and-dns-mcp/dist/index.js"],
"env": {
"STACKDNS_LOG_LEVEL": "warn",
"STACKDNS_USAGE_FILE": "/absolute/path/to/stack-and-dns-mcp/data/usage.json",
"STACKDNS_DB_FILE": "/absolute/path/to/stack-and-dns-mcp/data/stackdns.db"
}
}
}
}{
"mcpServers": {
"stack-and-dns": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "stack-and-dns-mcp"],
"env": {
"STACKDNS_LOG_LEVEL": "warn",
"STACKDNS_USAGE_FILE": "/absolute/path/to/stack-and-dns-data/usage.json",
"STACKDNS_DB_FILE": "/absolute/path/to/stack-and-dns-data/stackdns.db"
}
}
}
}Claude Desktop
Edit claude_desktop_config.json
(%APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json on Windows,
~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on macOS).
A Windows example is in examples/claude_desktop_config.json.
{
"mcpServers": {
"stack-and-dns": {
"command": "node",
"args": ["D:\\Projects\\MCP\\stack-and-dns-mcp\\dist\\index.js"],
"env": {
"STACKDNS_LOG_LEVEL": "warn",
"STACKDNS_USAGE_FILE": "D:\\Projects\\MCP\\stack-and-dns-mcp\\data\\usage.json",
"STACKDNS_DB_FILE": "D:\\Projects\\MCP\\stack-and-dns-mcp\\data\\stackdns.db"
}
}
}
}macOS / Linux:
{
"mcpServers": {
"stack-and-dns": {
"command": "node",
"args": ["/Users/you/stack-and-dns-mcp/dist/index.js"],
"env": {
"STACKDNS_LOG_LEVEL": "warn",
"STACKDNS_USAGE_FILE": "/Users/you/stack-and-dns-mcp/data/usage.json",
"STACKDNS_DB_FILE": "/Users/you/stack-and-dns-mcp/data/stackdns.db"
}
}
}
}Restart Claude Desktop; the tools appear under the tools icon: the three inspection tools always,
plus domain_history, the four bulk-check tools and the four monitoring tools when storage is
available (12 in all), and find_domains_using / list_technologies when a crawl seed file is set.
Claude Code
claude mcp add stack-and-dns \
-e STACKDNS_USAGE_FILE=/absolute/path/to/stack-and-dns-mcp/data/usage.json \
-e STACKDNS_DB_FILE=/absolute/path/to/stack-and-dns-mcp/data/stackdns.db \
-- node /absolute/path/to/stack-and-dns-mcp/dist/index.jsRemote deployment:
claude mcp add --transport http stack-and-dns https://mcp.example.com/mcp --header "Authorization: Bearer sdm_live_..."Metering a local stdio install with a customer key
A stdio server never contacts a hosted deployment; to use a hosted server's key, connect over HTTP
as in the remote example above. STACKDNS_API_KEY only selects one of the keys configured in the
same process (STACKDNS_API_KEYS or STACKDNS_API_KEYS_FILE in the same env block), so a local
install can be metered and rate-limited under that key's plan. Without such keys the variable is
ignored (the server logs a warning at startup) and the server runs in open local mode, unless
STACKDNS_REQUIRE_AUTH=true, in which case every tool call answers UNAUTHORIZED. With keys
configured but STACKDNS_API_KEY unset, or set to a key that matches none (that case logs a
warning), the process runs as an anonymous free caller: the other tools work within the free plan's quota, and the bulk-check and
monitoring tools answer UNAUTHORIZED.
Tool reference
The tools that take a domain (the three inspection tools, domain_history and watch_domain)
accept it as a bare hostname (example.com), a URL (https://www.example.com/pricing) or an
email address (jane@example.com); start_bulk_check takes a list of the same forms. Scheme,
path, port, query and a leading www. (for email checks) are stripped; IDN names are punycoded.
An empty or whitespace-only domain fails the input schema (see above), not INVALID_DOMAIN.
inspect_tech_stack
{ "domain": "allbirds.com", "includeRawHeaders": false, "includeEvidence": true }Key output fields:
Field | Description |
| Final URL, status, redirect chain, protocol, timings, HTTPS downgrade / TLS error flags, structured |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Category id to detected names |
|
|
|
|
| Human-readable caveats (blocked, truncated, downgraded, redirected off-domain) |
|
|
verify_email_infrastructure
{ "domain": "example.com", "dkimSelectors": ["mycustomselector"], "checkMtaSts": true }Field | Description |
| Sorted exchanges with resolved addresses, provider (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Proofpoint, Mimecast, Zoho, and 60+ more), Null-MX and implicit-A detection |
| Raw record, parsed mechanisms/modifiers, terminal |
| Every probed selector with key type, bit length, testing/revoked flags and provider hints |
| Policy, subdomain policy, effective policy, pct, alignment, |
| Transport policy records; the MTA-STS policy file is fetched and checked against the MX hosts |
| Match against a curated list of 469 throwaway-mail providers |
| Severity-sorted |
| 0-100 deliverability score with per-component points |
| One-line human summary. A policy that a failed lookup left unknown reads unknown ( |
comprehensive_audit
{ "domain": "hubspot.com", "dkimSelectors": [], "includeRawHeaders": false, "includeEvidence": false }Returns scores (overall, grade, email, security, infrastructure, weights and the
infrastructure breakdown), the full techStack and email results (or techStackError /
emailError if one side failed), merged findings, findingCounts, agent-friendly
highlights[] and a summary sentence. The summary sentence's counts leave out the
organizational record's DMARC findings when a subdomain's own _dmarc lookup failed;
findingCounts counts every finding.
domain_history
{ "domain": "example.com", "changesLimit": 50 }Reads stored scans only; it never contacts the domain. Every completed scan (a call to one of the
three inspection tools, a bulk-check item, a scheduled monitor check or a reverse-lookup crawl) is recorded in the database
named by STACKDNS_DB_FILE, keyed by the site with any leading www. removed. A call that was
cancelled or hit its deadline is not recorded, because its lookups may have been cut short. Stored
scans never record which caller requested them.
Field | Contents |
|
|
|
|
| Latest posture: score, grade, MX provider, SPF and DMARC policy, live DKIM selectors, MTA-STS mode, critical and high risk codes |
| Newest first: |
| The last 20 scans with source ( |
The first usable scan of a domain is a baseline and records no changes. A technology or DKIM selector must be missing from two consecutive clean scans before it is reported as removed, so a lazily loaded tag does not flap. Website scans that were blocked or failed are kept for the record but never change the stored state.
Email components are tracked separately: the MX records, whether the exchanges resolve, the SPF record, the SPF include tree, DMARC, MTA-STS, TLS-RPT/BIMI, and each DKIM selector. Each one updates, and is compared, only when its own lookups answered:
A component whose lookup failed (SERVFAIL, a timeout, a policy host that answered 5xx or 408, a bot challenge) keeps its last known value and reports no change. The components that did answer in the same scan are still compared, so a failed include never hides a
+allin the domain's own record.A definitive answer is a real change: an MTA-STS policy that returns 404, a policy host that does not exist (confirmed with our own resolver), or an invalid certificate.
A failure that persists for three scans spanning at least a day is accepted as the answer, because receivers see the same failure: exchanges that never resolve become
MX_ALL_UNRESOLVABLE, a policy host that never answers removes the MTA-STS mode. Nothing stays frozen forever. The streak only grows while the same lookup keeps failing, so a single timeout of something else is still held.The score only moves when every lookup answered or its failure was accepted as persistent; only a scan whose lookups all answered is stored with
ok: true. While a subdomain's own_dmarclookup fails, the stored score keeps the subdomain's last known DMARC points (the live score scores the unknown policy likep=none), so a timeout neither raises nor lowers it.DKIM risks and the score are compared only between scans that probed the same selectors. A key under a custom selector that one call passed and a bulk scan did not probe never reads as added or lost. Every email scan (calls, bulk items, scheduled checks) also probes every selector already known for the domain.
Records are evaluated in a fixed order, so a domain that publishes two SPF or DMARC records does not flip policy between scans because resolvers return them in a different order.
A subdomain whose own
_dmarclookup fails is never credited with the organizational domain's policy: the policy readsunknown(the live score scores it likep=none), and the organizational record's findings are not taken as the subdomain's (the one-linesummarydoes not count them either;riskCountsstill does). The subdomain's own DMARC stays inunverifieduntil its own lookup has answered once, and that first answer is a baseline, not a change. A subdomain that simply has no record of its own still inherits the organizational policy. When the lookup of an SPFredirect=target fails, the stored and bulk policy readsunknowntoo, notnone, and the findings that describe the terminalall(SPF_PASS_ALL,SPF_NEUTRAL_ALL,SPF_SOFTFAIL_ALL) keep their last known state. The liveverify_email_infrastructurefieldspf.allPolicystill readsnonein that case (its enum has nounknown);SPF_DNS_ERROR, the score note and the summary (SPF policy unknown (redirect=<target> lookup failed)) flag it.SPF whose
redirect=chain has never answered whole (the target or a laterredirect=hop failed) stays inunverified(withspfLookups) only until that failure is accepted as persistent. The domain's own record did answer, so from then on it is compared as usual while its policy readsunknown: a second record raisesSPF_MULTIPLE_RECORDS; deleting the record, or an accepted failure of its own TXT lookup, isspf_removed; and a record that stops handing its policy to that target (anotherredirect=target, or anallof its own, which overridesredirect=) is compared like any other change. A deletion, an accepted lookup failure and a record that stops delegating each end the wait for the target, so whatever follows is compared as usual too. A second record ends it only when the record evaluated (the first in sorted order) no longer delegates to the target. Only what theredirect=chain holds was never read whole. While the record still delegates to the target, the first scan in which the whole chain answers is the baseline of the terminal policy and the findings that describe it (nospf_policy,risk_neworrisk_resolvedfor them). The first such scan in whichspfLookupsis established too (the include tree answers, or an include's failure has been accepted) is the include tree's baseline: nospf_broken,spf_fixed,risk_neworrisk_resolvedfor validity, lookup counts or void lookups (SPF_VOID_LOOKUPS,SPF_TOO_MANY_LOOKUPS,SPF_CIRCULAR_INCLUDE). That is a later scan than the policy's when an include lookup failed in the policy's scan, and it still reports a policy change made in between. Until the whole chain answers, the first scan in which the target answered but a later hop's failure was accepted is a baseline for the tree read so far (if the target already answered in the scan that took SPF out ofunverified, that scan was this baseline); later such scans are compared with it. Each of these baselines covers the score too: noscore_droporscore_risein its scan, even for a score change another component caused. Findings of the domain's own record (such asSPF_MULTIPLE_RECORDSorSPF_SYNTAX_ERROR) and changes to other components are still reported in that scan.
Weakened policies (DMARC reject to none, SPF -all to ~all) are high, and an MTA-STS
downgrade is medium; strengthened ones are info. An unknown policy ranks with none:
reject or -all becoming unknown is high, and none becoming unknown is info. A policy
read again after an unknown stretch is ranked against the policy last actually read before it,
not against unknown: the same policy coming back (even +all or a malformed DMARC record) is
info, while quarantine coming back as none, or -all as +all, is high. A move away from
unknown with no policy read before it is info. In email, score is null until a scan in
which every lookup answered or its failure was accepted as persistent. unverified lists
components not yet established: no lookup has answered them and their failure has not been
accepted as persistent (DMARC and SPF behind redirect= follow the rules above). lookupsFailing
lists those whose latest lookups failed (their fields are the last known values, or the current
reading once the failure was accepted as persistent), so an empty unverified does not mean every
lookup answered: an accepted failure is listed in lookupsFailing. States stored by earlier
versions are re-baselined silently on their next scan, with no change records: an organizational
DMARC policy or its findings stored for a subdomain whose own lookup failure had been accepted, an
SPF policy stored as none behind an accepted failed redirect= target, and a stored score from
before SPF void-lookup and circular-include permerrors cost points, when the findings stored with
that score and the scan that next rewrites it both carry such a permerror (a permerror that first
appears after the upgrade is reported as a score_drop as usual). When a scan sets a DMARC or SPF
baseline but cannot rewrite the score because another lookup failed, the next scan that rewrites
the score re-baselines it silently.
Bulk checks: start_bulk_check, get_bulk_check, list_bulk_checks, cancel_bulk_check
{ "check": "email", "domains": ["acme.com", "https://www.globex.com/about", "jane@initech.com"] }check is email (verify_email_infrastructure), tech (inspect_tech_stack) or audit
(comprehensive_audit). The job is queued at once and worked through in the background by a
small pool shared fairly by every job, so one large list cannot starve a small one; jobs survive
restarts. start_bulk_check returns the job id, the inputs that were skipped (invalid, private,
or a duplicate of an earlier site) and what was charged. Poll get_bulk_check with the job id: it
returns status, per-status counts and one page of results (offset, limit up to 500,
optional status filter such as failed). Each result is a compact summary: score, grade, MX
provider, SPF and DMARC policy, DKIM found and high risks for email; reachability, HTTP status,
security grade, CMS, e-commerce, CDN and technology names for tech; the four scores and top
highlights for audit. In email summaries the SPF and DMARC policy can also read missing (no
record) or unknown (the lookup failed, a redirect= target's lookup failed, or a subdomain's own
_dmarc lookup failed), the DMARC policy invalid (a record without a valid policy), and the MX
provider unknown (the MX lookup failed) or null MX (no mail). Jobs are private to the caller
that submitted them, so bulk checks (and monitoring) need an identified caller (an API key, a
prepaid session, or a stdio server's own local identity): anonymous callers on a server with
STACKDNS_REQUIRE_AUTH=false share an address-based identity and are refused.
Billing happens once, when the job is accepted: prepaid callers pay the single-domain price per
accepted domain (email 1, tech 1, audit 2 credits), and plan keys spend one unit of their daily
quota per domain, all or nothing. Items that fail for a retryable reason (a timeout, a resolver
outage) and items cancelled before they ran are refunded when the job finishes. A definitive
answer such as DOMAIN_NOT_FOUND is a completed check and is charged. The polling, listing and
cancelling tools are free and never touch the daily quota. Limits: STACKDNS_BULK_MAX_DOMAINS
per job (default 1000) and STACKDNS_BULK_MAX_ACTIVE_JOBS unfinished jobs per caller (default 3).
A list may carry up to twice STACKDNS_BULK_MAX_DOMAINS raw entries; a longer list, or one with
more distinct domains than the maximum, is refused with LIMIT_EXCEEDED (details.maxDomains),
over MCP as over REST. Only a list over max(50000, 2 x STACKDNS_BULK_MAX_DOMAINS) entries fails
start_bulk_check's input schema first, which gives the plain-text -32602 result. A list with more
invalid or duplicate entries than max(100, accepted domains) is refused with INVALID_ARGUMENT,
since skipped entries are stored too. A prepaid session whose balance a job spent to zero can still read
and cancel its jobs, even when its client keeps re-sending the payment header it paid with; only
paid calls and new job submissions (POST /v1/jobs or start_bulk_check) answer with a new
payment challenge.
Monitoring: watch_domain, get_alerts, list_watches, unwatch_domain
{ "domain": "acme.com", "checks": ["email", "tech"], "webhookUrl": "https://hooks.example.com/stackdns" }A watched domain is re-checked every STACKDNS_MONITOR_INTERVAL_HOURS (default 24), once per
domain however many callers watch it. A check that fails for a retryable reason (a timeout, a
resolver outage) is retried after 30 minutes (or the interval, if shorter) and its prepaid charge
is refunded; a definitive answer such as NXDOMAIN is charged, raises one domain_not_found alert
and waits a full interval. Every change the scan store records (see
domain_history) becomes an alert for each watcher: DMARC or SPF weakened, a DKIM key lost, the
MX provider changed, a technology added or removed, a score drop, or the domain disappearing from
DNS. Changes found by any scan reach watchers, including a direct call or a bulk job. A new watch
only hears about changes from then on. Unwatching and watching again keeps the existing schedule,
so it never forces an early check.
get_alerts returns unread alerts oldest first and marks them read (markRead: false to peek,
sinceId and nextSinceId to page). With a webhookUrl (https only, a fully qualified public host
name or public address, no redirects followed) each batch is also POSTed as JSON:
{ "type": "domain.changes", "watchId": "watch_...", "domain": "acme.com", "sentAt": "...",
"alerts": [{ "id": 42, "kind": "email", "change": "dmarc_policy", "subject": "dmarc", "oldValue": "reject", "newValue": "none", "severity": "high", "at": "..." }] }The request carries x-stackdns-signature: t=<unix seconds>,v1=<hex>, where v1 is the
HMAC-SHA256 of <t>.<raw body> keyed with the webhookSecret returned once when the watch is
created. The timestamp is taken when the request is sent, so verify it and reject timestamps
older than a few minutes. A delivery that fails is retried after 1 minute, 5 minutes, 30 minutes,
2 hours and 12 hours, then marked failed; the alert stays readable through get_alerts either
way, with a short reason ("timed out", "DNS lookup failed", "HTTP 503"). Deliveries run beside the
scheduled checks, at most one request at a time per account, so a slow endpoint delays only its
own owner's alerts, and accounts take turns watch by watch within each delivery round, so neither
one account's backlog nor a few slow receivers hold up everyone else's webhooks.
Plans include a number of watched domains (free 5, pro 100, enterprise 2000, payg 500,
override with STACKDNS_MONITOR_WATCH_LIMITS_JSON). Prepaid callers pay
STACKDNS_MONITOR_CREDITS_PER_CHECK (default 1) per scheduled check. When the balance runs out
the watch pauses with a watch_paused alert, and it resumes by itself once the balance covers a
check again. Self-serve accounts' watches follow the subscription: they pause (plan_inactive)
while it is cancelled or unpaid, the newest beyond a downgraded plan's limit pause
(over_plan_limit), and they resume when the plan allows them again. When the subscription is
deleted for good (including after its key was already suspended for failed payments), its
watches are removed, up to 200 per round across all such accounts, since no key can manage them
any more; until then they stay paused and their pending webhook deliveries are cancelled, even a
delivery that is in flight at that moment. Watching, listing and reading alerts are free.
Monitoring needs an identified caller (an API key, a prepaid session, or a stdio server's own
local identity); watches that anonymous callers created on earlier versions are removed by the
schema upgrade.
Reverse lookup: find_domains_using, list_technologies
{ "technology": "Klaviyo", "activeOnly": true, "seenWithinDays": 90, "limit": 50 }Returns domains that run a technology, most recently seen first, with the detected version and
first-seen and last-seen dates, plus nextCursor for the next page. technology is a signature
id or name; an ambiguous name returns INVALID_ARGUMENT with the matching candidates in
details.candidates. list_technologies browses the catalogue (filter by query or category)
with how many domains currently use each technology.
The searchable universe is the crawl list, not the internet. An operator points
STACKDNS_CRAWL_SEED_FILE at a file of domains (one per line, or the first column of a CSV,
re-read when it changes), and a background crawler works through it at
STACKDNS_CRAWL_RATE_PER_MINUTE (default 20), re-visiting each domain every
STACKDNS_CRAWL_REFRESH_DAYS (default 30). For each domain it:
reads
https://<domain>/robots.txtfirst and skips the site when the group for our user agent (StackAndDnsBot, also matched when a group names it with a version such asStackAndDnsBot/1.0), or the*group when no group names it, does not allow/(RFC 9309: a group naming us overrides*, the rule with the most octets wins, rules and paths are compared in one percent-encoded form, soDisallow: /über/also covers/%C3%BCber/, and a literal*or$is named by its escape,%2Aor%24);fetches only the homepage, with the same transparent User-Agent, 3-second per-attempt deadline (6 s at most) and SSRF guard as
inspect_tech_stack, and checks every URL the fetch requests (a redirect, thehttp://fallback) against the robots.txt of that URL's origin first; each origin's file is downloaded once per crawl, and the time spent reading it counts neither against the homepage's deadline nor against the time left for the insecure-TLS retry and thehttp://fallback; when HTTPS fails and robots.txt refuses thehttp://fallback, the domain is recorded as unreachable and its last error names both the HTTPS failure (its first 300 characters) and the refusal;records the result like any other scan, so crawled domains also build up
domain_historyand can raise monitoring alerts;treats a robots.txt that answers 5xx or 429, or cannot be fetched, as "not now": the site is skipped, keeps its data and is retried on the failure schedule (after 1 hour, doubling);
waits a full refresh before retrying a domain that does not exist, and removes a site's data from the reverse lookup (and from
universe.scanned) when its robots.txt opts out or the domain stops existing.
The reverse lookup answers only from what the crawler itself observed, for domains on the crawl
list. Customers' calls, bulk jobs and monitor scans never appear there (not even their timing for
a crawl-list domain), so the tool cannot reveal anyone's prospect list. A changed seed file is
applied once it has stopped changing for one round, so a file being rewritten is never read half
written, and in small batches with pauses between them, so even a list of millions of domains
neither stalls the server nor holds up other processes' writes to the database. The list is parsed
into a private in-memory SQLite database and compared with the crawl targets there. That database
is attached only while the sync runs (about 200 MB for 5 million domains) and freed when it ends;
the list is never held in the JavaScript heap. At most STACKDNS_CRAWL_MAX_TARGETS distinct valid
domains are taken from the file, in file order. universe.domains and universe.scanned in each
answer say how large the searchable set is; GET /healthz reports crawl progress. Without a seed
file the two tools are not offered.
Error codes
Code | Retry? | Meaning |
| no | Input is not a resolvable hostname (IP literal, single label, bad characters) |
| no | Reserved TLD or the host resolves to loopback / private / link-local / metadata space |
| no | NXDOMAIN |
| yes | DNS resolution failed at the resolver level |
| yes | Plan quota exceeded; |
| after payment | Prepaid balance exhausted |
| no | Server requires an API key, or a bulk-check or monitoring tool was called anonymously (they need an identified caller: an API key, a prepaid session, or a stdio server's own local identity) |
| yes | Tool exceeded |
| yes | The client cancelled the request before it completed; nothing was charged |
| no | A bulk, monitoring, reverse-lookup or REST argument is malformed (no valid domains, unknown check, bad webhook URL, an unknown or ambiguous technology with |
| no | No bulk check with that id exists for this caller |
| when | A plan or server limit was reached: too many domains in one job or too many watches (no), or too many unfinished jobs (yes, once one finishes) |
| yes | Unexpected failure (logged server-side) |
These codes come from the tools themselves. Arguments that fail a tool's input schema (an empty or
whitespace-only domain included) never reach it: the SDK answers with a plain-text
MCP error -32602: ... result that carries no code, so such input never yields INVALID_DOMAIN.
Payment redemption over HTTP answers 503 payment_recording_failed when a payment verified (or
settled) but could not be recorded yet; retrying the same credential is safe and never pays twice.
For x402 the 503 carries X-Session-Token (and sessionToken in the body) for the principal the
credits will land on: keep it. Any process sharing the database finishes the recording in the
background, and until then that token is answered 503, never a new payment demand. A retry of
the same X-PAYMENT header completes the recording too, but it never hands out a token again: a
settled authorization is public on-chain, so presenting it proves nothing about who paid. The
503's principal gets nothing when the credits go to another presentation of the same
authorization (with or without from) instead: one that settled earlier, even one first answered
unconfirmed, or one a sibling process recorded first because it could not see this settlement
(see Any Node host). A retry of that 503's header
then answers 409 payment_already_redeemed.
When the facilitator does not confirm a settlement (a timeout or a 5xx on /settle, or success
without a transaction id), the answer is 502 x402_settlement_unconfirmed, again with the session
token (left out only when the server could not store the unconfirmed state; the operator then
issues it with npm run settlements -- session <principalId>, the principal being in the server's
log line), never a new 402: the transfer may have gone through, so do not pay again. A prepaid
session that can serve the request is served from its balance instead, with
X-Payment-Status: x402_settlement_unconfirmed. That means a session with credits left, or any
session on a request that spends nothing, such as reading or cancelling jobs. The 502 is only for
requests nothing else can serve. The server keeps that state as long as it remembers redeemed
payments (400 days), across restarts and sibling processes; with STACKDNS_DB_FILE=none it is kept
in the usage file. A retry of the same header settles the payment if the facilitator shows the
authorization unspent, and otherwise answers "unconfirmed", never x402_expired. The facilitator
is asked again at most once a minute per payment, whichever process gets the retry; retries in
between are answered from the stored state. For 24 hours after the payment's last update (a
re-check counts), the session it would credit answers a spending request its balance cannot cover
with that 502 rather than a payment demand. That holds whether or not its client re-attaches the
payment header. After that the session may buy again: a spending request it cannot cover gets the
402 credits_exhausted payment demand, and when the unconfirmed header is attached the 402 also
carries X-Payment-Status: x402_settlement_unconfirmed. The header sent without a session keeps
answering 502. Contact the operator with the header to reconcile. The server logs the payer,
amount and target principal, and the operator resolves the payment with npm run settlements (see
Reconciling x402 settlements).
A retry of a payment that is already recorded answers 409 payment_already_redeemed, even when its
stored settlement state could not be removed at the time.
If the answer to a 502 or 503 is lost (for example a client timeout), retrying the payment without
a session does not return the token: a settled authorization is public on-chain, so presenting it
proves nothing. The operator can issue the session with
npm run settlements -- session <principalId>.
One narrow case remains. Suppose the database fails both the 'settled' marker write and the
recording. The 503 still goes out with the session, and the process then stops before its
background retry publishes the marker. A later presenter of the same (public) payment header could
then be handed that session, but only if the facilitator also settles an already-spent
authorization again, or the transfer is still pending. All three must coincide. The error log line
settled x402 payment answered with its session, but its 'settled' marker could not be written
flags such a payment for manual reconciliation.
An unreachable or blocked homepage is not an error: the tool returns fetch.ok=false /
blocked.blocked=true with the TLS and DNS data it could still gather.
Hosted mode (HTTP) and monetization
node dist/index.js --http --port 3333Endpoints:
Route | Auth | Purpose |
| yes | Streamable HTTP (MCP 2025-03-26+). |
| yes | Legacy HTTP+SSE transport for older clients |
| yes | Caller's plan, remaining quota, credit balance and lifetime counters |
| no | Service descriptor, endpoints, auth instructions, pricing |
| no | Liveness probe |
| no | Plan limits and payment options |
| no | Stripe Checkout return pages with redemption instructions |
| yes | Bulk checks over REST (when storage is available) |
| no | Self-serve API key signup through Stripe subscriptions (when configured) |
| yes | Replace the caller's self-serve key with a new one (while signup is configured) |
| Stripe signature | Keeps self-serve keys in step with their subscriptions |
Rate-limit headers X-RateLimit-Limit, X-RateLimit-Http-Limit and X-RateLimit-Plan are set
on every authenticated response, X-RateLimit-Remaining and X-RateLimit-Reset on each one within
the HTTP request ceiling, and a 429 from that ceiling carries Retry-After instead;
X-RateLimit-Limit is the plan's tool calls per minute and X-RateLimit-Http-Limit the ceiling
on HTTP requests of any kind (initialize, tools/list, ping and tool calls). Requests that end
before a principal is resolved (invalid keys or tokens, payment redemption, 402 challenge minting)
are throttled per client address (STACKDNS_UNAUTHENTICATED_PER_MINUTE, default 60; set
STACKDNS_TRUST_PROXY correctly behind a load balancer or every client shares one address). A
prepaid session that can serve the request and re-attaches a payment header the server answers
without asking Stripe or the facilitator (already redeemed, unconfirmed, expired, or still being
settled or recorded) counts against its own ceiling instead. Sessions can only be driven or ended
by the principal that initialized them. A request for
another principal's session answers 404 so a client whose identity changed simply re-initializes.
Per-address limits treat an IPv6 client's whole /64 as one address.
With STACKDNS_REQUIRE_AUTH=false, requests without credentials run as an anonymous principal
per client address, on the free plan whenever the server sells access (keys, payments or
signup) and on local only on a server that sells nothing. Such requests from a browser page on
an origin not listed in STACKDNS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS are refused with 403, so a web page cannot act
as its visitor.
API keys
Generate keys (the raw key is shown once; the server stores only the SHA-256 hash):
npm run keys:generate -- --plan pro --label "Acme Corp"
npm run keys:generate -- --plan enterprise --count 5 --json > new-keys.jsonThe --json output contains the raw keys. Hand them out, then keep only id, keyHash,
prefix, plan, label and active in the keys file and delete the raw output; the plain output
prints that hashes-only block for you. A key file that still has key fields works, but leaves the
raw keys on the server. .gitignore covers keys.json and new-keys.json at the project root so
neither is committed by accident.
Load them either inline or from a file:
# small deployments
export STACKDNS_API_KEYS="sdm_live_abc...:pro:Acme Corp,sdm_live_def...:free:Trial"
# recommended: hashes only, no raw keys on the server
export STACKDNS_API_KEYS_FILE=/etc/stackdns/keys.jsonkeys.json:
[
{ "id": "key_1f2e3d4c5b6a", "keyHash": "<sha256 hex>", "prefix": "sdm_live_abc12", "plan": "pro", "label": "Acme Corp", "active": true }
]Clients send Authorization: Bearer sdm_live_... or X-API-Key: sdm_live_.... A key file
path that does not exist yet (a fresh volume, say) is logged and treated
as zero file-backed keys; a file that exists but cannot be parsed is a startup error.
Self-serve API keys (Stripe subscriptions)
Set STRIPE_SECRET_KEY and a recurring Stripe Price for one or both plans
(STRIPE_PRICE_PRO=price_..., STRIPE_PRICE_ENTERPRISE=price_...) and GET /signup becomes a
plan page. The buyer subscribes through Stripe Checkout and lands on /keys/success, which issues
the key and shows it exactly once; a second visit (the Checkout Session id in the URL is a payment
reference that leaks through logs and dashboards) never shows or re-issues it. A payment that is
still clearing (bank debits) gets its key on that first visit too, inactive until Stripe confirms
the payment, so the id cannot be used by someone else to claim the key first. A subscription that
has already ended when the buyer opens the page (Stripe reports it canceled or expired, or a
subscription webhook has recorded its cancellation, expiry or deletion) answers 410 and shows no
key; so does a reload of that page. The key's plan follows the subscription's current price. Keys
are stored as SHA-256 hashes in the database next to the configured ones and work on every route.
A buyer replaces a key with POST /v1/keys/rotate (authenticated with the current key; available
while signup is configured, and after it is switched off the operator rotates keys), and the
account keeps its bulk checks, watches, alerts and usage across rotations.
Point a Stripe webhook at POST /v1/stripe/webhook with the events
customer.subscription.created, customer.subscription.updated and
customer.subscription.deleted, and set STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET=whsec_.... Keys are then
suspended while a subscription is past due, unpaid or paused, restored when it recovers, moved to
the new plan when the price changes, and revoked for good when the subscription is deleted. Events
are applied once and in order, and signatures older than five minutes are refused. The webhook
stays mounted whenever STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET is set, even after signup is switched off, so keys
already sold keep following their subscriptions. Without the webhook secret, keys keep working
after a cancellation, and the server warns about it at startup.
Signup and checkout requests share the per-address ceiling for unauthenticated traffic.
Bulk checks over REST
The bulk-check tools are also a plain REST API for spreadsheets and scripts, with the same billing, limits and ownership:
# CSV or plain text: the first column of each line (a header row such as "domain" or "website" is skipped)
curl -X POST "https://mcp.example.com/v1/jobs?check=email" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer sdm_live_..." -H "Content-Type: text/csv" --data-binary @leads.csv
# or JSON
curl -X POST https://mcp.example.com/v1/jobs -H "Authorization: Bearer sdm_live_..." \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"check":"tech","domains":["acme.com","globex.com"]}'
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer sdm_live_..." https://mcp.example.com/v1/jobs/job_... # status and one page (?offset, ?limit, ?status)
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer sdm_live_..." https://mcp.example.com/v1/jobs/job_.../results.csv -o results.csv
curl -X DELETE -H "Authorization: Bearer sdm_live_..." https://mcp.example.com/v1/jobs/job_... # cancel pending itemsPOST answers 202 with the job and a Location header. The CSV export has one row per
submitted line in the original order, with the check's summary columns; cells that a spreadsheet
would run as a formula are prefixed with '. GET /v1/jobs/:id refuses an unknown ?status and
a non-numeric ?offset or ?limit with 400 instead of ignoring them.
Errors from the job service, and request bodies that are not valid JSON or are too large, use the
tool error shape { "error": { "code", "message", "retryable", "details" } } with a matching HTTP
status (400 invalid input, 401 anonymous caller, 402 insufficient credits, 404 unknown job or
route, 413 too many domains or a body over the limit, 429 quota or too many active jobs). A JSON
body may be 1 MiB and a CSV body 2 MiB, or more when STACKDNS_BULK_MAX_DOMAINS is raised (64
bytes for each of the twice-the-maximum raw entries a job accepts). Requests turned away by
authentication before the route runs (401 bad key or token, 403 browser origin, 409, 429 request
ceiling, 502, 503) use { "error": "<code>", "message": ... } like every other HTTP route, and a
402 carries the payment challenge body.
Plans and rate limits
Plan | Tool calls / minute | Tool calls / day | Concurrent | HTTP requests / minute |
| 10 | 100 | 2 | 50 |
| 60 | 5 000 | 8 | 300 |
| 300 | 100 000 | 32 | 1 500 |
| 60 | 1 000 000 | 8 | 300 |
| 120 | 1 000 000 | 8 | 600 |
The daily cap of payg and local cannot be reached at their stock per-minute rates; it only
matters when an override raises perMinute. Override any value with STACKDNS_RATE_LIMITS_JSON='{"free":{"perMinute":5},"pro":{"perDay":20000,"httpPerMinute":600}}'
(httpPerMinute defaults to five times perMinute, never below 30). All four values are reported
by GET /pricing. Usage is tracked per principal and per tool and persisted atomically to
STACKDNS_USAGE_FILE; idle per-address and per-payment principals with no remaining credits are
dropped from the ledger after 90 days, API-key counters are kept forever. With
STACKDNS_DB_FILE=none, unfinished x402 settlements are kept in the usage file too (format version
3; older files still load), so a restart still knows a payment whose settle never answered.
Pointing the server at a database later moves them into it.
HTTP 402 payment challenges
Enable with STACKDNS_PAYMENTS_ENABLED=true and one or both methods in
STACKDNS_PAYMENT_METHODS. With STACKDNS_REQUIRE_AUTH=true (the HTTP default), a request that
carries no credentials, a prepaid session that has run out of credits on a paid call or a job
submission, and a payment credential that was refused (unpaid, expired, rejected by the
facilitator) all receive the following (an invalid key or session token gets 401, and an
unparseable payment credential gets 400):
HTTP/1.1 402 Payment Required
WWW-Authenticate: Payment id="chl_...", realm="stack-and-dns-mcp", methods="stripe x402",
intent="charge", expires="2026-09-16T22:00:00.000Z", request="<base64url JSON>"
Content-Type: application/json
{
"x402Version": 1,
"error": "payment_required",
"accepts": [ { "scheme": "exact", "network": "base", "maxAmountRequired": "500000", "asset": "0x8335...", "payTo": "0x...", ... },
{ "scheme": "stripe", "extra": { "checkoutUrl": "https://checkout.stripe.com/...", "paymentIntentId": "pi_...", "clientSecret": "..." } } ],
"challenge": { "id": "chl_...", "methods": ["stripe", "x402"], "instructions": { ... } }
}The header follows the Machine Payments Protocol WWW-Authenticate: Payment shape and the body
is x402-compatible, so both agent ecosystems can parse it.
Stripe flow
Set
STRIPE_SECRET_KEY, optionallySTRIPE_PRICE_CENTS(default 500 = $5.00),STRIPE_CREDITS_PER_PURCHASE(default 100) andSTRIPE_CURRENCY.The challenge carries a PaymentIntent
clientSecret(for programmatic confirmation) and a hosted CheckoutcheckoutUrl(for a human operator).After paying, the agent retries with
Authorization: Payment <base64url({"method":"stripe","challengeId":"chl_...","paymentIntentId":"pi_..."})>(orcheckoutSessionIdfrom the success page).The server verifies the PaymentIntent through the Stripe API (status, amount, currency, service metadata, not already redeemed), grants credits and answers the original request. The response carries
Payment-Receipt(base64url JSON) andX-Session-Token.Subsequent calls use
Authorization: Bearer sdm_sess....until the credits run out, at which point a fresh 402 is issued. Session tokens expire 30 days after issue (an expired token gets401 invalid_session_token). Every successful payment or top-up returns a fresh token inX-Session-Tokenand thePayment-Receipt; switch to it, because an expired token can no longer reach the credits left on it.To top up without changing identity (and therefore without losing an open MCP session), keep
Authorization: Bearer <existing sdm_sess token>and addX-PAYMENT(or sendAuthorization: Payment <credential>plusX-Session-Token: <existing token>); the credits are added to that principal, the same token stays valid until its own expiry, and the response carries a fresh 30-day token. An invalid or expired token sent with a payment is rejected with401before anything is charged.Re-presenting an already-redeemed payment credential answers
409(never402) and carries the current payment challenge (WWW-Authenticateheader andacceptsbody), so a client that keeps re-sending its last payment header learns how to buy more without auto-paying on a duplicate. A credential that is mid-verification in a concurrent request answers a plain409 payment_redemption_in_progresswithRetry-After: 2. Neither is a 402, so a duplicate retry can never charge twice. A payment reference alone is deliberately not a credential: it never re-issues a session token, so keep the token from thePayment-Receipt. A funded prepaid session that also carries a stale or unredeemable payment header is served from its own balance (with anX-Payment-Statusheader naming the reason). This includes a payment whose settlement is unconfirmed (X-Payment-Status: x402_settlement_unconfirmed); it also is not counted against the per-address limit while its stored answer is used. So is an exhausted session on requests that cannot spend credits (reading or cancelling jobs). A session re-sending a payment header that is already redeemed is limited by its own plan's rate limit, not by the per-address limit for unauthenticated requests.Redeemed payment ids are remembered for 400 days (well past card dispute windows) and a PaymentIntent older than that is refused with
payment_too_old, so an id that has aged out of the ledger can never be presented again for fresh credits. An x402 authorization whosevalidBeforehas passed is refused asx402_expiredbefore any facilitator call for the same reason.
x402 / MPP flow
Set
X402_FACILITATOR_URL(a facilitator exposing/verifyand/settle),X402_PAY_TO(your wallet), and optionallyX402_NETWORK,X402_ASSET,X402_ASSET_NAME,X402_ASSET_VERSION,X402_PRICE_ATOMIC,X402_CREDITS_PER_PAYMENT.X402_ASSET_NAMEandX402_ASSET_VERSIONare the token's EIP-712 domain, which clients sign over (extra.nameandextra.versionin every requirement;GET /pricingshows them aspayments.x402.assetNameandpayments.x402.assetVersion), so they must equal the contract'sname()andversion().X402_ASSET,X402_ASSET_NAMEandX402_ASSET_VERSIONeach default to USDC onX402_NETWORK: onbase(oreip155:8453)0x833589fCD6eDb6E08f4c7C32D4f71b54bdA02913,USD Coin,2; onbase-sepolia(oreip155:84532)0x036CbD53842c5426634e7929541eC2318f3dCF7e,USDC,2. On any other network, startup with x402 enabled fails unlessX402_ASSETandX402_ASSET_NAMEare set (the version still defaults to2). With x402 enabled, startup also refuses the built-in USDC contract of one network on the other, a name or version that differs from that contract's EIP-712 domain, and anX402_ASSETthat is a token other than the network's USDC withoutX402_ASSET_NAME, because every payment would fail; setX402_ASSET_VERSIONtoo if that token'sversion()is not2.X402_NETWORKis matched against the built-in names case-insensitively and sent in their canonical spelling (Base-Sepoliais sent asbase-sepolia,EIP155:8453aseip155:8453), because clients and facilitators compare network ids exactly; any other network id is sent as written, only trimmed, since CAIP-2 references can be case-sensitive.The agent signs an
exactpayment for the advertised requirements and retries with theX-PAYMENT: <base64 payload>header (orAuthorization: Payment ...).The server calls the facilitator to verify and settle, records the transaction, qualified by the authorization's payer and nonce, to prevent replay, grants credits and returns the receipt and session token as above.
Set STACKDNS_SESSION_SECRET so session tokens survive restarts, and give every process that
shares the database the same value: a token signed by one process is otherwise rejected (401)
by the others, including the token a 503 or 502 hands out, which no retry re-issues. Credits
are refunded automatically when a metered call fails.
Reconciling x402 settlements
npm run settlements -- list # payments that need an operator (oldest first, at most 1000)
npm run settlements -- list --all --json
npm run settlements -- resolve <paymentId> --tx <transaction hash>
npm run settlements -- resolve <paymentId> --failed
STACKDNS_SESSION_SECRET=... npm run settlements -- session <principalId>The tool works on the database in STACKDNS_DB_FILE (or --db <file>) and is safe to run next to
live servers: each change is one transaction that first checks the marker is still as listed. It
does not edit markers kept in the usage file (STACKDNS_DB_FILE=none). From a build, run
node dist/cli/settlements.js <command> instead; in the Docker image, for example,
docker exec <container> node dist/cli/settlements.js list. Exit codes: 0 done, 1 refused or
failed, 2 bad usage. Bad usage is an unknown command or option, a flag without its value, a
missing or extra argument, resolve without exactly one of --tx and --failed, or a --limit
that is not a positive whole number, all checked before the database is opened; a marker that
needs --nonce and is not given a usable one exits 2 as well.
listshows unconfirmed payments (unknown), settles whose process died (settling (stale)) and settled payments whose credits are not recorded (settled), oldest update first. Each row has the payment id, principal, credits, age, time since its last update and the transaction.--alladds live settles and leftovers of payments that are already recorded;--jsonprints JSON. At most 1000 rows are shown (--limit <n>changes that). When more remain, a notice on stderr says so; stdout stays the table or the JSON.resolve <paymentId> --tx <hash>: you confirmed the transfer on-chain. The payment is recorded under the ids a server uses, and its credits go to the principal the marker names, once, however often you run the command, unless another presentation of the same authorization was credited first (it is then recorded without credits and reported as already recorded). Unlike a server,resolvedoes not yield to an earlier settlement of the same authorization that is not recorded yet: whenlistshows twosettledmarkers with the same transaction, resolve the one with the greater age (claimed first) first, or let a running server record them. A settled marker accepts only the transaction the facilitator reported, and ignores--nonce. Any other marker written by an earlier release does not record its authorization, so pass--nonce <nonce>too (the EIP-3009 nonce from the payer'sX-PAYMENTheader, or from theAuthorizationUsedevent); the payment is then recorded under that nonce alone. It is not credited if a server already credited the same authorization with its payer, and it blocks any later credit of that authorization. For a newer marker,--nonceis optional and must match the authorization's nonce. A settle that is still running is refused.resolve <paymentId> --failed: you confirmed nothing moved. The marker ends and the payment id is recorded as redeemed, so that authorization can never settle into credits on this server later. A payer whose authorization is still valid can then pay again with a new authorization. The old authorization stays valid on-chain until itsvalidBefore; EIP-3009 tokens such as USDC let the payer cancel an unused one withcancelAuthorization. Settled markers are refused, because money moved: use--tx.session <principalId>prints a prepaid session token for the principal on stdout, signed withSTACKDNS_SESSION_SECRET(required: it must be the HTTP servers' secret). Use it for a payer whose answer was lost. The principal is the one in the payment's log line or inlist. The label and balance come from the database when one is available (--label <text>overrides the label); the command also works without one.
Configuration reference
Every variable is optional, and the server reads only its environment. See
.env.example for the annotated template: copy it to .env and load it with
npm run start:env (node --env-file=.env dist/index.js) or docker run --env-file .env, or set
the variables in your process manager. With npm run start:env, variables already set in the
environment take precedence over the file; with docker run --env-file, the file overrides the
image's own settings (and -e flags override the file). With docker run --env-file, leave STACKDNS_TRANSPORT, STACKDNS_USAGE_FILE and
STACKDNS_DB_FILE out of the file (they are commented out in the template). The image sets http
and the /data paths, and a relative ./data is not writable by the image's non-root user. A
value that fails validation stops startup with a message naming the variable.
Command-line flags override the matching variables: --http (aliases --sse, --remote),
--stdio, --host <h>, --port <n> and --log-level <level>, each value also accepted as
--flag=value. A missing or invalid flag value stops startup too; unrecognised arguments are
ignored.
Variable | Default | Description |
|
|
|
|
| Listen address for HTTP mode. The port is taken from |
|
| Public base URL used in payment challenges |
| empty |
|
| empty | CORS origins. Empty = CORS for any origin on authenticated requests; anonymous browser requests (with |
|
| Enable the SDK's Host/Origin validation on the MCP endpoints ( |
|
| Express trust-proxy value behind a reverse proxy: a hop count ( |
|
| Idle Streamable HTTP session lifetime |
|
| Reject requests without a key or payment |
| empty | Inline |
| empty | Key this stdio process meters tool calls against; it must match a key in |
| random per boot | HMAC secret for prepaid session tokens (at least 16 characters). Keep it fixed and the same for every process sharing the database, or tokens are rejected after a restart or by a sibling. Tokens last 30 days |
| built-in | Per-plan overrides (partial objects are fine) |
|
| Per-client-address ceiling for requests that end before a principal is resolved |
|
| Per-principal usage counters, plus a backup mirror of balances. It is the authoritative credit ledger, redeemed-payment list and x402 settlement store only when storage is disabled or unavailable; otherwise those live in |
|
| SQLite database for stored scans, |
|
| Stored scans, change-log entries and removed technologies older than this are deleted daily; a domain's current technologies and email posture are kept however old |
|
| Offer the bulk-check tools and REST API (needs storage) |
|
| Distinct domains per job (up to 50000; a list may carry twice as many raw entries); unfinished jobs per caller. HTTP request bodies are limited to 1 MiB of JSON and 2 MiB of CSV, raised to 128 bytes per allowed domain when that is more (6.1 MiB at 50000), so the largest accepted list fits |
|
| Bulk items checked at once, shared by all jobs |
|
| Finished jobs and their results are deleted after this |
|
| Offer the monitoring tools (needs storage) |
|
| How often each watched domain is re-checked; checks run at once |
|
| Charged to prepaid watchers per scheduled check ( |
|
| Watched domains per plan (partial objects are fine) |
|
| Delivered, failed and webhook-less alerts older than this are deleted |
|
| Permit |
| empty | Domain list (text or CSV, first column) crawled for the reverse lookup; enables |
|
| Homepages fetched per minute across all domains; fetches at once |
|
| How often each crawl-list domain is re-visited (failures retry sooner, backing off from one hour) |
|
| At most this many distinct valid domains (up to 5000000) are taken from the seed file, in file order; blank, comment, header, invalid and duplicate lines (a leading |
| empty | Recurring Stripe Price ids sold on |
| empty | Signing secret of the |
|
| Enable 402 challenges; |
|
| Challenge validity |
| see | Stripe settings |
| see | x402 settings. |
|
| Per-attempt homepage fetch deadline, 500-30000; the insecure-TLS retry and the |
|
| DNS timeout per try (2 tries per resolver, each attempt capped at twice the value plus 250 ms; a failed query may be retried once on the other resolvers, so one query can take about 12.5 s at the default) and TLS handshake timeout |
|
| Hard ceiling for a whole tool call |
|
| HTML body cap |
| system | Explicit resolvers, comma-separated: |
|
| Retried per query when the primary fails; preferred for 5 minutes only after the primary proves unreachable (connection errors, or hard timeouts across 3 distinct zones). Set to |
|
| How long a successful DNS answer (including NXDOMAIN) is reused for identical queries; |
|
| Request User-Agent |
|
| Permit private / reserved targets (development only) |
| empty | Extra selectors probed on every call |
|
|
|
Defensive design
Strict input validation. Zod schemas gate every argument; the domain parser accepts URLs, emails and IDN names but rejects IP literals, single labels, malformed labels and reserved TLDs.
SSRF protection. Every outbound socket (HTTP fetch and TLS probe) resolves through a guarded
lookupthat refuses loopback, RFC 1918, CGNAT, link-local, cloud-metadata, multicast, reserved, ULA, IPv4-mapped and NAT64-embedded private addresses at connect time, which also closes the DNS-rebinding window.Hard deadlines everywhere. Per-attempt fetch deadline (default 3 s; the TLS and
http://fallbacks end by twice that), per-hop redirect budget (max 5 hops, http/https only), TLS handshake timeout, c-ares timeout plus a hard Promise race on every DNS query, and a whole-call ceiling in the meter.Body caps and charset-aware decoding. Streams are cut at
STACKDNS_MAX_BODY_BYTES; the result is flaggedtruncated.Graceful degradation. TLS validation failures trigger an insecure retry (flagged), an unreachable HTTPS origin triggers an HTTP fallback (flagged), WAF challenge pages are detected and reported as
blocked, and an unreachable homepage still yields TLS and DNS data.Resolver fallback. When the host resolver refuses raw UDP (common with VPN clients and container stubs), queries are retried on the public resolvers and preferred there for a bounded window; the first successful primary answer ends the window early.
DNS answer cache. Successful answers (including NXDOMAIN/NODATA) are reused for 30 seconds and identical in-flight queries are coalesced, so the existence probe, the MX and SPF evaluations and both halves of
comprehensive_auditask each question of the resolver once. Errors are never cached.Cancellation. A tool call that times out or is cancelled by the client aborts its in-flight fetch, TLS probe and policy download and stops fanning out further DNS probes, so abandoned work does not keep consuming the concurrency budget.
No crashes. Tool exceptions become structured
isErrorresults, credits are refunded on failure, anduncaughtException/unhandledRejectionare logged rather than fatal.Secrets hygiene. API keys are stored hashed and compared in constant time; session tokens are HMAC-signed; logger redacts fields that look like secrets.
Scoring model
Email deliverability (0-100): MX 20, SPF 22, DKIM 20, DMARC 28, MTA-STS 5, TLS-RPT 3, BIMI 2.
+all, permerrors (multiple records: 3 of 22 SPF points; more than 10 lookups, more than 2 void
lookups or a circular include: at most 6 of 22), SPF syntax errors (at most 8 of 22), weak or
revoked DKIM keys, p=none and partial pct all reduce points; disposable domains are capped at
10; NXDOMAIN is 0. An MTA-STS DNS record whose policy file cannot be fetched or is not a valid
policy (no version: STSv1) earns 0 of 5; a DMARC lookup that fails scores as absent but is
reported as unconfirmed (DMARC_DNS_ERROR plus a medium DMARC_MISSING). A subdomain whose own
_dmarc lookup fails while the organizational record answers scores its unknown policy like
p=none (10 of 28); the stored score keeps the subdomain's last known DMARC points instead. Once
exchanges that never resolve are accepted as unresolvable, the stored score takes their MX points
away as it would for exchanges that do not exist.
Security posture (0-100): security-header score x 0.65 (HTTPS 15, HSTS 15, CSP 15,
clickjacking 10, X-Content-Type-Options 10, Referrer-Policy 8, Permissions-Policy 7, COOP 4,
CORP 3, version disclosure 5, cookie flags 8) plus TLS 35 (valid chain, hostname and dates;
deductions for imminent expiry; 8 points for a reachable but invalid certificate). HSTS earns
nothing on a page served over plaintext HTTP, where browsers must ignore it, and a present but
empty, zero or unparseable HSTS header scores 3 with an HSTS_INVALID finding. Referrer-Policy is
judged by its last recognised token: the leaky values (no-referrer-when-downgrade,
unsafe-url) and unrecognised values score 3 with a REFERRER_POLICY_WEAK finding.
Infrastructure maturity (0-100): presence of edge protection 15, analytics 15, tag management 10, go-to-market stack 15, modern framework 10, recognized platform 10, consent management 8, observability 7, customer engagement 5, experimentation 5. Blocked fetches are reported as a lower bound.
Overall: email 40 % + security 35 % + infrastructure 25 %. Grades: A >= 90, B >= 80, C >= 70, D >= 60, otherwise F.
Signature database
src/signatures/signatures.json holds 450+ entries validated
at startup by src/signatures/schema.ts. Each entry:
{
"id": "klaviyo",
"name": "Klaviyo",
"category": "email-marketing",
"website": "https://www.klaviyo.com",
"confidence": 100,
"html": ["static\\.klaviyo\\.com", "_learnq"],
"scripts": ["klaviyo\\.js"],
"headers": { "x-powered-by": "^Klaviyo" },
"cookies": ["__kla_id"],
"meta": { "generator": "^Klaviyo ?([\\d.]+)?\\;version:\\1" },
"implies": ["shopify"],
"excludes": []
}Patterns are case-insensitive regular expressions; a trailing
\;version:\Ncaptures a version from group N (Wappalyzer convention).headersvalues are regexes; an empty string means "header present".impliesadds transitive detections (e.g. WooCommerce implies WordPress) at reduced confidence.Invalid patterns are logged and skipped so one bad entry never disables detection.
npm testasserts that every pattern compiles, ids are unique and categories exist.
Deployment
Docker
docker build -t stack-and-dns-mcp .
openssl rand -hex 32 > stackdns.secret # once; keep it outside the repository (*.secret is git-ignored)
docker run -p 3333:3333 -v stackdns-data:/data \
-e STACKDNS_PUBLIC_URL=https://mcp.example.com \
-e STACKDNS_API_KEYS_FILE=/data/keys.json \
-e STACKDNS_SESSION_SECRET="$(cat stackdns.secret)" \
stack-and-dns-mcpThe session secret must stay the same across container re-creation and upgrades, or outstanding
session tokens, and the prepaid credits reachable only through them, stop working. Passing it
through --env-file works as well; keep the template's transport and data-path lines commented
out (see Configuration reference).
The image runs as a non-root user, exposes /healthz for orchestrators and keeps usage and the
SQLite database (STACKDNS_DB_FILE=/data/stackdns.db) on the /data volume. Without a named
volume or bind mount for /data, the data (stored scans, change history, prepaid balances) lives
in an anonymous volume tied to that one container. It survives a restart, but a re-created
container (an upgrade, a new docker run) starts empty, and --rm deletes it. The healthcheck
probes /healthz on the port from PORT or STACKDNS_PORT (default 3333) and passes without
probing when STACKDNS_TRANSPORT=stdio, which has no HTTP listener. A transport or port given
only as a command-line flag (--stdio, --port) is invisible to it, so set the variables
instead, or run with --no-healthcheck.
Any Node host (Fly.io, Render, Railway, ECS, a VM)
Set STACKDNS_TRANSPORT=http, PORT, STACKDNS_PUBLIC_URL, a fixed STACKDNS_SESSION_SECRET
(the same for every process), STACKDNS_TRUST_PROXY=true when behind a load balancer, and mount
persistent storage for STACKDNS_USAGE_FILE and STACKDNS_DB_FILE (an ephemeral disk silently
resets stored scans, change history and balances on every deploy). Start with
node dist/index.js --http. Streamable HTTP sessions and rate-limit windows are held per
process, so run a single replica (or pin clients to one instance with sticky sessions and accept
per-instance quotas). Overlapping processes that share the database file are safe:
Prepaid balances and redeemed payment ids live in the database, so a charge in one process and a refund in another land on the same balance, and a payment is redeemed exactly once. A usage file from before this is imported once.
A lease in the database elects a single worker, so during a rolling deploy, or with several stdio servers started by one client, bulk items, monitor checks and crawls run once.
Every bulk item write is fenced to the worker that claimed it, so a worker that lost the lease can never overwrite its successor's results.
Each scheduled monitor check is claimed in a transaction that re-checks it is still due, so overlapping rounds from two processes run and charge it once.
A process that finds the database locked at startup (a sibling's migration, say) waits for up to two minutes, then exits rather than run on a private ledger beside the shared one. A stdio server, which sells nothing, waits up to 15 seconds to open the database and again to attach the shared credit ledger, and otherwise runs without storage, so MCP clients do not time out its
initialize. An HTTP server waits up to 15 seconds for that first attach before it exits.Every process must share one
STACKDNS_SESSION_SECRET; otherwise a prepaid session token issued by one process is rejected (401) by the others.x402 settlements in progress are recorded in the database before the facilitator is asked to settle, so a retry that reaches a sibling process, or arrives after a restart, never gets a new payment demand for money that may already have moved.
Each settled x402 payment is recorded under its transaction qualified by its authorization (
x402_<tx>:<payer>.<nonce>; the payer is the authorization'sfrom, or the payer the facilitator's/verifyreports whenfromis left out, given as a 20-byte hex address or as a CAIP-10 account id such aseip155:8453:0x...). A facilitator that batches several payments into one transaction therefore credits each of them once, even when two payers reuse a nonce, while one authorization presented twice (with or withoutfrom) is still credited once. If both presentations settle while the first one's credits are still being recorded (after a database error, or while another process holds the write lock), the one that settled first is still the one credited. Within one process this always holds; across processes it holds once the first one's settlement is marked settled in the database. The later one is answered409 payment_already_redeemedand credited nothing. If the database refused that mark too (as it does while the lock is held), a sibling process cannot see the first settlement, and whichever presentation is recorded first is credited.npm run settlements -- resolvedoes not apply this rule (see Reconciling x402 settlements). If no usable payer is known for an authorization sent withoutfrom(the facilitator reports none, or reports it in any other form), it is recorded under its nonce alone (x402_<tx>:<nonce>). That record blocks the payer-qualified one, and any payer-qualified record of the same transaction and nonce blocks it, whichever of the two presentations arrives first. Records written by earlier releases (x402_<tx>) still block. So does a record whose payer part is not a 20-byte address, such as a hashed CAIP-10 account id that an earlier release wrote (or that a server ornpm run settlementswrites when it finishes a marker such a release left): it counts as a record without a known payer, so it blocks the same authorization presented withfrom, and with it another payer's authorization that reuses its nonce in the same batched transaction, since it may be the same authorization.The monitor's entitlement pass (pausing, re-planning, resuming and retiring self-serve watches) takes the write lock only when an account's watches need a change. When another process holds that lock, the rest of the pass waits for the next round instead of failing the round.
Publishing to MCP marketplaces
npm: bump
versioninpackage.jsonand both version fields inserver.json(the top-levelversionandpackages[0].version), thennpm publish --access public.prepublishOnlyrebuilds and runs the tests. ThemcpNamefield ties the npm package to the registry entry below.Official MCP Registry (registry.modelcontextprotocol.io): edit
server.jsonsonameuses your GitHub namespace (io.github.<your-user>/stack-and-dns-mcp), add your hostedremotes[].url, thenmcp-publisher login github,mcp-publisher validateandmcp-publisher publish. The registry verifies ownership of the npm package throughmcpName(keep it equal toname), and its schema limitsdescriptionto 100 characters.Smithery: push the repo with
smithery.yamland claim it at smithery.ai; the descriptor builds the Dockerfile and exposesdnsServers,fetchTimeoutMsandlogLevelas user settings.Cursor directory / Claude connectors / Glama / PulseMCP / mcp.so: submit the GitHub URL and the hosted
/mcpendpoint; each directory readsserver.jsonor the README config blocks.Docker MCP Catalog: submit the image built from the Dockerfile with the
--httpentrypoint.
Development and testing
npm run dev # stdio with tsx (no build)
npm run dev:http # HTTP on :3333
npm run typecheck
npm test # node:test suites, offline (analyzers, scoring, auth, payments and ledger, bulk jobs, monitor, crawler, scan store)
npm run format # Prettier (.prettierrc.json); npm run format:check only reports
npm run smoke -- example.com
# real MCP client round trip (initialize, tools/list, tools/call) over each transport, after npm run build
node scripts/e2e-client.mjs stdio example.com
SDM_KEY=sdm_live_... node scripts/e2e-client.mjs http example.com # against localhost:3333 (override with SDM_URL)npm test, and therefore npm publish (prepublishOnly), needs Node.js 22.13+: the suites use
node:sqlite, and on Windows, where npm runs scripts through cmd.exe, only Node's own --test
expands test/*.test.ts. The suite never connects off the machine: DNS is scripted, servers
listen on 127.0.0.1, and the HTTPS end-to-end tests make their self-signed loopback certificate in
process (test/fixtures/loopback-cert.ts), so they need no openssl binary and none are skipped.
Project layout:
src/
index.ts entrypoint, transport selection, storage and ledger attach, process guards
config.ts Zod-validated env/CLI configuration and plan limits
server.ts McpServer factory and instructions
schemas.ts tool input/output Zod contracts
services.ts storage-backed services and background workers (bulk, monitor, crawler, maintenance)
logger.ts JSON-lines stderr logger
tools/ inspect_tech_stack, verify_email_infrastructure, comprehensive_audit,
domain_history, bulk checks, monitoring, reverse lookup
signatures/ signatures.json (450+), schema, compile + match engine
middleware/ auth (API keys, session tokens), payments (Stripe, x402), rate limiter,
per-address throttle, usage ledger, tool-call meter
transports/ stdio, Express (Streamable HTTP + SSE) and the /v1/jobs REST API (jobsApi.ts)
store/ SQLite schema and migrations (v1-v10), stored scans, bulk jobs, monitor,
crawler, reverse index, credit ledger and x402 settlement markers,
self-serve keys, worker lease
billing/ self-serve key signup and the Stripe API client
cli/generate-key.ts API key generator (npm run keys:generate)
cli/settlements.ts operator reconciliation of x402 settlements (npm run settlements)
lib/ domain parsing, DNS client with fallback, HTTP fetcher, TLS inspector,
SPF/DKIM/DMARC/MX/MTA-STS/TLS-RPT/BIMI analyzers, security headers,
WAF detection, scoring, SSRF guards, robots.txt, domain lists, webhooks
types/ ambient type declarations
data/disposable-domains.json
test/ node:test suites (test/fixtures/ holds shared helpers)
scripts/smoke.ts run tools directly
scripts/e2e-client.mjs real MCP client round trip over stdio or HTTPTroubleshooting
Symptom | Cause / fix |
| The host resolver refuses UDP; the built-in fallback to 1.1.1.1/8.8.8.8 handles it automatically. Set |
| The site's WAF challenged the request. Detection is partial; the result still reports the WAF vendor, headers, TLS and DNS. |
| The provider uses a non-standard selector. Pass it via |
401 on every HTTP request |
|
Session tokens rejected after a restart, or by another instance | Set a fixed |
Prepaid token rejected after about a month | Session tokens last 30 days; use the token from your most recent payment or top-up. |
| The facilitator did not confirm the settle; do not pay again. Retry the same header later, or have the operator reconcile it with |
Startup fails with a message naming a variable or flag | Its value is not accepted (for example an unknown payment method, a resolver that is not an IP address, |
Claude Desktop does not show the tools | Use absolute paths in |
MIT License. Copyright (c) 2026 Mewnah.
Available Tools
12 toolscancel_bulk_checkCancel Bulk CheckADestructiveIdempotentInspect
Cancel the pending items of a bulk check; items already running finish normally. Cancelled items are refunded when the job finishes. Free.
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| jobId | Yes | Job id returned by start_bulk_check (job_ followed by 24 hex characters). |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| job | Yes | |
| billing | Yes |
TDQS
Does the description disclose side effects, auth requirements, rate limits, or destructive behavior?
Annotations already declare destructiveHint=true and idempotentHint=true, so the safety profile is known; the description adds genuine value beyond that by narrowing destructiveness (only pending items, running items finish normally), disclosing that refunds are deferred until the job finishes, and noting the call is free. The only gap is that it does not say what calling it on an already-finished job returns, though an output schema exists to cover return shape.
Agents need to know what a tool does to the world before calling it. Descriptions should go beyond structured annotations to explain consequences.
Is the description appropriately sized, front-loaded, and free of redundancy?
Three tight clauses, front-loaded with scope, then side effects, then cost — every sentence carries information. The trailing 'Free.' is terse to the point of being cryptic but is still load-bearing for an agent deciding whether to call it.
Shorter descriptions cost fewer tokens and are easier for agents to parse. Every sentence should earn its place.
Given the tool's complexity, does the description cover enough for an agent to succeed on first attempt?
For a one-parameter, non-destructive-to-running-work cancellation tool with annotations and an output schema, the description covers scope, side effects, refund timing, and cost. Nothing an agent needs in order to call it correctly is missing.
Complex tools with many parameters or behaviors need more documentation. Simple tools need less. This dimension scales expectations accordingly.
Does the description clarify parameter syntax, constraints, interactions, or defaults beyond what the schema provides?
There is a single required jobId with 100% schema coverage, including the exact pattern and a reference to start_bulk_check as its source. The description adds nothing about the parameter, which is appropriate at full schema coverage but earns only the baseline.
Input schemas describe structure but not intent. Descriptions should explain non-obvious parameter relationships and valid value ranges.
Does the description clearly state what the tool does and how it differs from similar tools?
States a specific verb and resource ('Cancel the pending items of a bulk check') and, crucially, scopes the operation to pending items only, which separates it semantically from start_bulk_check and get_bulk_check. It stops short of naming those siblings explicitly, so it falls just below the top mark.
Agents choose between tools based on descriptions. A clear purpose with a specific verb and resource helps agents select the right tool.
Does the description explain when to use this tool, when not to, or what alternatives exist?
Usage is implied by the description's scope statement — you call this to stop a job's remaining work — but there is no explicit when-to-use vs. when-not guidance, no mention of what happens if the job has already finished, and no pointer to list_bulk_checks/get_bulk_check for discovering a jobId.
Agents often have multiple tools that could apply. Explicit usage guidance like "use X instead of Y when Z" prevents misuse.
comprehensive_auditComprehensive Domain AuditARead-onlyIdempotentInspect
Run inspect_tech_stack and verify_email_infrastructure concurrently and aggregate them into a single 0-100 health score (email deliverability 40%, security posture 35%, infrastructure maturity 25%) with a letter grade, merged severity-sorted findings, and human-readable highlights suitable for a research brief or CRM enrichment. Includes the full output of both underlying tools. If one inspection fails the other still completes and the error is reported inline. Cost: 2 credits.
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| domain | Yes | Domain to inspect. Accepts a bare hostname ("example.com"), a URL ("https://www.example.com/pricing") or an email address ("jane@example.com"). Scheme, path, port and query are stripped; IDN names are accepted. | |
| dkimSelectors | No | Extra DKIM selectors to probe. | |
| includeEvidence | No | Include detection evidence snippets in the tech-stack section. | |
| includeRawHeaders | No | Include the raw response header map in the tech-stack section. |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Yes | ||
| domain | Yes | |
| scores | Yes | |
| billing | Yes | |
| summary | Yes | |
| timings | Yes | |
| findings | Yes | |
| auditedAt | Yes | |
| techStack | Yes | |
| emailError | Yes | |
| highlights | Yes | |
| inputDomain | Yes | |
| findingCounts | Yes | |
| techStackError | Yes |
TDQS
Does the description disclose side effects, auth requirements, rate limits, or destructive behavior?
Goes well beyond the readOnly/idempotent/non-destructive annotations: it discloses partial-failure semantics ('if one inspection fails the other still completes and the error is reported inline'), the credit cost, the exact score composition, and what the response aggregates. Those are precisely the behaviors an agent cannot infer from the annotation set.
Agents need to know what a tool does to the world before calling it. Descriptions should go beyond structured annotations to explain consequences.
Is the description appropriately sized, front-loaded, and free of redundancy?
Front-loaded with the verb and the composition, then three short clauses that each add non-redundant information: aggregation details, partial-failure behavior, and cost. No restatement of the title and no filler.
Shorter descriptions cost fewer tokens and are easier for agents to parse. Every sentence should earn its place.
Given the tool's complexity, does the description cover enough for an agent to succeed on first attempt?
For a composite tool with an output schema, the description covers composition, weighting, failure behavior, and cost — everything needed to invoke and interpret it. The only mild gap is not explaining whether the returned sub-tool outputs can be used to re-derive or override the aggregate score.
Complex tools with many parameters or behaviors need more documentation. Simple tools need less. This dimension scales expectations accordingly.
Does the description clarify parameter syntax, constraints, interactions, or defaults beyond what the schema provides?
Schema coverage is 100% and each of the four parameters carries its own descriptive text, so the schema already does the work. The description adds no meaning about the parameters themselves (e.g. how dkimSelectors affects the email score), leaving this at the baseline for a fully documented schema.
Input schemas describe structure but not intent. Descriptions should explain non-obvious parameter relationships and valid value ranges.
Does the description clearly state what the tool does and how it differs from similar tools?
States a specific action chain (run inspect_tech_stack and verify_email_infrastructure concurrently, aggregate into a single 0-100 score), names both underlying sibling tools, and spells out the weighting model. An agent can distinguish this composite tool from the two single-purpose siblings without opening any schema.
Agents choose between tools based on descriptions. A clear purpose with a specific verb and resource helps agents select the right tool.
Does the description explain when to use this tool, when not to, or what alternatives exist?
The description makes clear this is the composite alternative to calling the two underlying inspections separately ('Includes the full output of both underlying tools') and names concrete use cases (research brief, CRM enrichment), plus a cost signal of 2 credits that helps an agent choose the cheaper single-tool path. It stops short of an explicit 'do not use when you only need the tech stack' exclusion.
Agents often have multiple tools that could apply. Explicit usage guidance like "use X instead of Y when Z" prevents misuse.
domain_historyDomain Change HistoryARead-onlyIdempotentInspect
Return everything this server has recorded about a domain from earlier scans, without running a new one: current and past technologies with first-seen and last-seen dates, the latest email posture (MX provider, SPF and DMARC policy, DKIM selectors, high risks), and a dated change log (technologies added or removed, DMARC weakened, DKIM key lost, MX provider changed, score drops). Use it to spot a prospect that just adopted or dropped a tool, or to see how a domain's email security has moved over time. known=false means the domain has never been scanned here; run inspect_tech_stack or verify_email_infrastructure first. Cost: 1 credit.
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| domain | Yes | Domain to inspect. Accepts a bare hostname ("example.com"), a URL ("https://www.example.com/pricing") or an email address ("jane@example.com"). Scheme, path, port and query are stripped; IDN names are accepted. | |
| changesLimit | No | Maximum number of recorded changes to return, newest first. |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Yes | ||
| known | Yes | False when this server has never scanned the domain; every other field is then empty. |
| domain | Yes | |
| billing | Yes | |
| changes | Yes | |
| firstSeen | Yes | |
| recentScans | Yes | |
| technologies | Yes | |
| lastTechScanAt | Yes | |
| lastEmailScanAt | Yes |
TDQS
Does the description disclose side effects, auth requirements, rate limits, or destructive behavior?
Beyond the readOnly/idempotent annotations, it discloses that no new scan is performed, the exact categories of data returned, the known=false sentinel meaning the domain was never scanned, and a cost of 1 credit. These are operationally important facts the annotations cannot express.
Agents need to know what a tool does to the world before calling it. Descriptions should go beyond structured annotations to explain consequences.
Is the description appropriately sized, front-loaded, and free of redundancy?
The scoping constraint and the no-new-scan guarantee are front-loaded, followed by return contents, use cases, the known=false caveat, and cost. Each sentence carries distinct information with no filler or repetition.
Shorter descriptions cost fewer tokens and are easier for agents to parse. Every sentence should earn its place.
Given the tool's complexity, does the description cover enough for an agent to succeed on first attempt?
For a read-only history lookup with full schema coverage and an output schema, the description supplies everything needed to call it correctly: prerequisites, empty-result semantics, cost, and interpretation guidance. Nothing material is left implicit.
Complex tools with many parameters or behaviors need more documentation. Simple tools need less. This dimension scales expectations accordingly.
Does the description clarify parameter syntax, constraints, interactions, or defaults beyond what the schema provides?
Schema coverage is 100% and both parameters are documented in detail, so the description does not need to restate them. It implies the change log is bounded and dated (relating to changesLimit) but adds no syntax or formatting detail beyond the schema; baseline 3 applies.
Input schemas describe structure but not intent. Descriptions should explain non-obvious parameter relationships and valid value ranges.
Does the description clearly state what the tool does and how it differs from similar tools?
The description opens with a specific verb and resource: 'Return everything this server has recorded about a domain from earlier scans, without running a new one.' The negative scope ('without running a new one') plus the explicit pointer to inspect_tech_stack and verify_email_infrastructure clearly separates it from the siblings that perform fresh scans.
Agents choose between tools based on descriptions. A clear purpose with a specific verb and resource helps agents select the right tool.
Does the description explain when to use this tool, when not to, or what alternatives exist?
It gives concrete when-to-use cases ('spot a prospect that just adopted or dropped a tool', 'see how a domain's email security has moved over time') and an explicit fallback condition: if known=false, run inspect_tech_stack or verify_email_infrastructure first. Both the positive and negative cases are covered.
Agents often have multiple tools that could apply. Explicit usage guidance like "use X instead of Y when Z" prevents misuse.
get_alertsGet Change AlertsAInspect
Alerts raised for this caller's watched domains, oldest first. Each names the domain, what changed (e.g. dmarc_policy reject -> none, tech_added Klaviyo, dkim_lost), the old and new values and a severity. By default returns unread alerts and marks them read. Free.
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| limit | No | ||
| sinceId | No | Only alerts with a larger id; pass the previous nextSinceId to page. | |
| markRead | No | Mark the returned alerts read, so the next unread call skips them. | |
| unreadOnly | No |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| alerts | Yes | |
| billing | Yes | |
| nextSinceId | Yes |
TDQS
Does the description disclose side effects, auth requirements, rate limits, or destructive behavior?
Annotations say readOnlyHint=false and idempotentHint=false, but the description supplies the reason: the default call marks alerts read, which is a state-mutating side effect an agent must know about. It also discloses ordering (oldest first) and cost ('Free'), both beyond the annotations. It does not say whether the read-marking is reversible or what happens with an empty result, keeping it 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.
Is the description appropriately sized, front-loaded, and free of redundancy?
Three dense sentences, front-loaded with scope and ordering, then the mutation behavior, then cost. 'Free.' earns its place as a one-word pricing fact, and nothing is filler.
Shorter descriptions cost fewer tokens and are easier for agents to parse. Every sentence should earn its place.
Given the tool's complexity, does the description cover enough for an agent to succeed on first attempt?
Output schema exists, so return shape need not be explained, yet the description still summarizes alert fields usefully. The one real behavioral risk (marks read by default) is disclosed. Minor gaps: irreversibility of the read-marking and behavior on an empty inbox.
Complex tools with many parameters or behaviors need more documentation. Simple tools need less. This dimension scales expectations accordingly.
Does the description clarify parameter syntax, constraints, interactions, or defaults beyond what the schema provides?
Schema coverage is 50%, with limit and unreadOnly undocumented in the schema. The description compensates by explaining the default unread-only behavior and the mark-as-read side effect, which gives meaning to unreadOnly and markRead beyond their names. It adds nothing about limit or pagination, so a sample of the semantics is still missing.
Input schemas describe structure but not intent. Descriptions should explain non-obvious parameter relationships and valid value ranges.
Does the description clearly state what the tool does and how it differs from similar tools?
States a specific resource (alerts), a scope restriction ('this caller's watched domains'), and an ordering ('oldest first'). The addition of what each alert contains (domain, change type, old/new values, severity) makes the purpose unambiguous and separates it from siblings like list_watches or domain_history.
Agents choose between tools based on descriptions. A clear purpose with a specific verb and resource helps agents select the right tool.
Does the description explain when to use this tool, when not to, or what alternatives exist?
Implied usage is inferable from 'by default returns unread alerts and marks them read', but there is no explicit when-to-use versus alternatives such as domain_history or watch_domain. No guidance on when to set markRead=false or unreadOnly=false, or on choosing between them.
Agents often have multiple tools that could apply. Explicit usage guidance like "use X instead of Y when Z" prevents misuse.
get_bulk_checkGet Bulk Check Status and ResultsARead-onlyIdempotentInspect
Status, counts and one page of per-domain results for a bulk check started by this caller. Results are compact summaries (score, grade, providers, policies, technologies). For email checks spfPolicy and dmarcPolicy can also be missing (no record) or unknown (the lookup failed, an SPF redirect= target's lookup failed, or a subdomain's own _dmarc lookup failed), dmarcPolicy invalid (a record without a valid policy), and mxProvider unknown (the MX lookup failed) or 'null MX (no mail)'. Free.
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| jobId | Yes | Job id returned by start_bulk_check (job_ followed by 24 hex characters). | |
| limit | No | Results per page. | |
| offset | No | Index of the first result to return. | |
| status | No | Only return items in this state, e.g. failed. |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| check | Yes | |
| items | Yes | |
| jobId | Yes | |
| counts | Yes | |
| status | Yes | |
| billing | Yes | |
| accepted | Yes | |
| createdAt | Yes | |
| startedAt | Yes | |
| submitted | Yes | |
| finishedAt | Yes | |
| nextOffset | Yes | Pass as offset to fetch the next page; null when this is the last page. |
| creditsCharged | Yes | Prepaid credits charged up front; failed and cancelled items are refunded when the job finishes. |
| creditsRefunded | Yes | |
| creditsPerDomain | Yes | |
| quotaUnitsCharged | Yes | Daily-quota units charged up front for plan keys; refunded like credits. |
| quotaUnitsRefunded | Yes |
TDQS
Does the description disclose side effects, auth requirements, rate limits, or destructive behavior?
Beyond the readOnly/idempotent/non-destructive annotations, the description discloses the shape of the payload (compact summaries of score, grade, providers, policies, technologies), the per-caller authorization scope, and the exact sentinel semantics for spfPolicy, dmarcPolicy, and mxProvider including the distinction between 'no record', 'lookup failed', and 'invalid record'. It even flags that the operation is free, which no annotation conveys.
Agents need to know what a tool does to the world before calling it. Descriptions should go beyond structured annotations to explain consequences.
Is the description appropriately sized, front-loaded, and free of redundancy?
The purpose is front-loaded in the first clause, and nothing present is pure filler. However, the second half is a single run-on sentence with deeply nested parentheses enumerating sentinel states, which is dense and hard for an agent to parse quickly.
Shorter descriptions cost fewer tokens and are easier for agents to parse. Every sentence should earn its place.
Given the tool's complexity, does the description cover enough for an agent to succeed on first attempt?
For a simple four-parameter read tool with full schema coverage, complete annotations, and an output schema, the definition covers scoping, result shape, and edge-case values well. The only meaningful gap is polling/refresh guidance relative to job state, which the output schema and annotations cannot supply.
Complex tools with many parameters or behaviors need more documentation. Simple tools need less. This dimension scales expectations accordingly.
Does the description clarify parameter syntax, constraints, interactions, or defaults beyond what the schema provides?
Schema coverage is 100%, so limit, offset, status, and the jobId pattern are already fully documented in the schema and the description adds nothing further about them. The extra detail it does provide concerns result fields rather than input parameters, so baseline 3 applies.
Input schemas describe structure but not intent. Descriptions should explain non-obvious parameter relationships and valid value ranges.
Does the description clearly state what the tool does and how it differs from similar tools?
States a concrete verb+resource: returns status, aggregate counts, and one paginated slice of per-domain results for a single job, scoped to 'this caller'. That is enough to tell it apart in practice from start_bulk_check, cancel_bulk_check, and list_bulk_checks, though none of those siblings is named explicitly.
Agents choose between tools based on descriptions. A clear purpose with a specific verb and resource helps agents select the right tool.
Does the description explain when to use this tool, when not to, or what alternatives exist?
Usage is only implied: the caller is expected to hold a jobId from start_bulk_check, and the schema note reinforces that pairing. There is no explicit statement of when to call this versus list_bulk_checks, or whether to poll it while a job is still running, which an agent would need to infer.
Agents often have multiple tools that could apply. Explicit usage guidance like "use X instead of Y when Z" prevents misuse.
inspect_tech_stackInspect Web Technology StackARead-onlyIdempotentInspect
Fetch a company's homepage (3-second deadline per attempt, at most 6 s including the insecure-TLS retry and the http:// fallback; transparent bot User-Agent) and fingerprint its technology stack against 455 signatures: CMS / site builder, e-commerce platform, JavaScript framework, CDN & hosting, WAF, analytics, tag manager, marketing automation, CRM, live chat, payments, advertising pixels, consent management and more. Also inspects the TLS certificate (validity, expiry, issuer, hostname match) and grades HTTP security headers (HSTS, CSP, X-Frame-Options, cookies) into a 0-100 security score. Handles redirects, WAF challenge pages (reported as blocked=true), timeouts and unreachable hosts gracefully. Use it to qualify prospects ("is this a Shopify store using Klaviyo?"), research competitors, or pre-screen leads. Cost: 1 credit.
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| domain | Yes | Domain to inspect. Accepts a bare hostname ("example.com"), a URL ("https://www.example.com/pricing") or an email address ("jane@example.com"). Scheme, path, port and query are stripped; IDN names are accepted. | |
| includeEvidence | No | Include the matched pattern and HTML snippet for every detected technology. | |
| includeRawHeaders | No | Include the full lower-cased response header map in the result. |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| fetch | Yes | |
| domain | Yes | |
| billing | Yes | |
| blocked | Yes | |
| partial | Yes | |
| summary | Yes | |
| timings | Yes | |
| security | Yes | |
| warnings | Yes | |
| fetchedAt | Yes | |
| categories | Yes | |
| rawHeaders | Yes | |
| inputDomain | Yes | |
| technologies | Yes | |
| signatureDatabase | Yes |
TDQS
Does the description disclose side effects, auth requirements, rate limits, or destructive behavior?
Annotations already declare readOnly/idempotent/openWorld, yet the description still adds substantial non-obvious behavior: per-attempt 3s deadline, 6s total with retry and http:// fallback, bot User-Agent, WAF challenges surfaced as blocked=true, and a 1-credit cost.
Agents need to know what a tool does to the world before calling it. Descriptions should go beyond structured annotations to explain consequences.
Is the description appropriately sized, front-loaded, and free of redundancy?
Front-loaded with the action and outcome, and every clause carries information (timeouts, signature count, security grading, cost). It is dense and the long technology-category list is somewhat list-heavy, but nothing is wasted.
Shorter descriptions cost fewer tokens and are easier for agents to parse. Every sentence should earn its place.
Given the tool's complexity, does the description cover enough for an agent to succeed on first attempt?
An output schema exists so return values need no explanation, and the description fully covers timing, retry/fallback, failure modes, and cost — everything an agent needs to decide to call and to interpret a blocked=true result.
Complex tools with many parameters or behaviors need more documentation. Simple tools need less. This dimension scales expectations accordingly.
Does the description clarify parameter syntax, constraints, interactions, or defaults beyond what the schema provides?
Schema description coverage is 100%, so the domain format rules and the includeEvidence/includeRawHeaders flags are already fully documented; the description adds no parameter-level meaning beyond that baseline.
Input schemas describe structure but not intent. Descriptions should explain non-obvious parameter relationships and valid value ranges.
Does the description clearly state what the tool does and how it differs from similar tools?
States a specific verb (Fetch + fingerprint) and resource (homepage technology stack) and enumerates the categories detected, which clearly separates it from siblings like verify_email_infrastructure or comprehensive_audit.
Agents choose between tools based on descriptions. A clear purpose with a specific verb and resource helps agents select the right tool.
Does the description explain when to use this tool, when not to, or what alternatives exist?
Gives concrete use cases ('qualify prospects', 'research competitors', 'pre-screen leads') that make the intended context clear, but never names an alternative sibling or states when NOT to use it (e.g., when to prefer comprehensive_audit).
Agents often have multiple tools that could apply. Explicit usage guidance like "use X instead of Y when Z" prevents misuse.
list_bulk_checksList Bulk ChecksARead-onlyIdempotentInspect
This caller's most recent bulk checks, newest first, with status and counts. Free.
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| limit | No |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| jobs | Yes | |
| billing | Yes |
TDQS
Does the description disclose side effects, auth requirements, rate limits, or destructive behavior?
Annotations already declare readOnly, idempotent, non-destructive and closed-world, so safety is covered. The description adds value beyond that with ordering (newest first), returned fields (status and counts) and cost ('Free'), though it omits pagination behavior and the default result cap, which matters for a listing tool.
Agents need to know what a tool does to the world before calling it. Descriptions should go beyond structured annotations to explain consequences.
Is the description appropriately sized, front-loaded, and free of redundancy?
Two short sentences with no filler; scope, ordering, contents and cost are front-loaded in a single clause. Every phrase carries information.
Shorter descriptions cost fewer tokens and are easier for agents to parse. Every sentence should earn its place.
Given the tool's complexity, does the description cover enough for an agent to succeed on first attempt?
For a simple read-only listing tool with a full annotation profile and an output schema covering return values, the description is nearly sufficient. The remaining gap is the limit parameter and how many results come back by default.
Complex tools with many parameters or behaviors need more documentation. Simple tools need less. This dimension scales expectations accordingly.
Does the description clarify parameter syntax, constraints, interactions, or defaults beyond what the schema provides?
There is one parameter (limit) with 0% schema description coverage, and the description says nothing about what it controls, its default of 20, or its 100 maximum. 'Most recent' hints at a result window but does not compensate for the undocumented limit.
Input schemas describe structure but not intent. Descriptions should explain non-obvious parameter relationships and valid value ranges.
Does the description clearly state what the tool does and how it differs from similar tools?
The description gives a specific verb and resource ('most recent bulk checks'), plus scope ('this caller's'), ordering ('newest first') and return contents ('status and counts'). It implicitly separates itself from get_bulk_check by being a list, but it never names a sibling or explicitly contrasts with list_watches, so it falls short of a 5.
Agents choose between tools based on descriptions. A clear purpose with a specific verb and resource helps agents select the right tool.
Does the description explain when to use this tool, when not to, or what alternatives exist?
Usage is only implied: 'this caller's most recent' suggests a quick recency overview, and the sibling set makes get_bulk_check the obvious alternative for a single check, but the description never states when to prefer this tool or what it excludes. No prerequisites or exclusions are given.
Agents often have multiple tools that could apply. Explicit usage guidance like "use X instead of Y when Z" prevents misuse.
list_watchesList Watched DomainsARead-onlyIdempotentInspect
This caller's watched domains with their checks, last and next check times and pause state. Free.
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
No parameters | |||
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| billing | Yes | |
| watches | Yes | |
| watchLimit | Yes |
TDQS
Does the description disclose side effects, auth requirements, rate limits, or destructive behavior?
Annotations already declare readOnly, idempotent, non-destructive and closed-world, so the safety profile is covered. The description still adds value beyond them by naming the returned fields (checks, last/next check times, pause state) and by stating "Free," a cost characteristic that appears nowhere in the annotations.
Agents need to know what a tool does to the world before calling it. Descriptions should go beyond structured annotations to explain consequences.
Is the description appropriately sized, front-loaded, and free of redundancy?
One compact sentence-fragment with the key content front-loaded and zero filler. It is on the edge of being too terse, since it omits a verb, but nothing stated is wasted.
Shorter descriptions cost fewer tokens and are easier for agents to parse. Every sentence should earn its place.
Given the tool's complexity, does the description cover enough for an agent to succeed on first attempt?
With zero parameters, an output schema present, and rich annotations, the description covers what is returned and its cost. Minor omissions such as result ordering or any cap on the number of watches returned are low-impact given the output schema handles the response shape.
Complex tools with many parameters or behaviors need more documentation. Simple tools need less. This dimension scales expectations accordingly.
Does the description clarify parameter syntax, constraints, interactions, or defaults beyond what the schema provides?
The tool takes zero parameters, so there is nothing for the description to disambiguate. Baseline 4 applies; the phrase "This caller's" correctly signals that no owner/user parameter is needed or accepted.
Input schemas describe structure but not intent. Descriptions should explain non-obvious parameter relationships and valid value ranges.
Does the description clearly state what the tool does and how it differs from similar tools?
Names the resource (this caller's watched domains) and enumerates what the listing includes: checks, last and next check times, pause state. An agent can distinguish this from watch_domain/unwatch_domain and from the bulk-check siblings, though it never names those alternatives explicitly.
Agents choose between tools based on descriptions. A clear purpose with a specific verb and resource helps agents select the right tool.
Does the description explain when to use this tool, when not to, or what alternatives exist?
There is no when-to-use or when-not-to-use guidance and no reference to alternatives such as list_bulk_checks or domain_history. The only scoping cue is the phrase "This caller's," which implicitly limits results to the authenticated caller.
Agents often have multiple tools that could apply. Explicit usage guidance like "use X instead of Y when Z" prevents misuse.
start_bulk_checkStart Bulk Domain CheckAInspect
Queue a lead list for background checking: email (deliverability), tech (technology stack) or audit (both) for up to 1000 domains. Returns a job id immediately; poll get_bulk_check for progress and paged results. Every scan is also recorded for domain_history. Charged when the job is accepted, per accepted domain, at the matching single-domain tool's price (email 1, tech 1, audit 2 credits, or one daily-quota unit per domain on plan keys); items that fail for retryable reasons or are cancelled are refunded when the job finishes; the charge shows in job.creditsCharged or job.quotaUnitsCharged, not in billing.creditsCharged. Invalid and duplicate inputs are never charged, but a list with more invalid or duplicate entries than max(100, accepted domains) is refused with INVALID_ARGUMENT.
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| check | Yes | email = verify_email_infrastructure, tech = inspect_tech_stack, audit = comprehensive_audit, for every domain. | |
| domains | Yes | Domains, URLs or email addresses. Duplicates (by site) and invalid entries are skipped and never charged; a list with more invalid or duplicate entries than max(100, accepted domains) is refused with INVALID_ARGUMENT. At most 1000 distinct domains per job, in at most 2000 entries; a list over either limit (up to 50000 entries) is refused with LIMIT_EXCEEDED (details.maxDomains). |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| job | Yes | |
| next | Yes | |
| billing | Yes | |
| skipped | Yes | The first 100 skipped inputs. |
| skippedTotal | Yes |
TDQS
Does the description disclose side effects, auth requirements, rate limits, or destructive behavior?
Goes well past the annotations (readOnlyHint=false, idempotentHint=false, openWorldHint=true) by disclosing asynchronous semantics (returns a job id immediately), side effects (every scan recorded in domain_history), billing timing and per-mode pricing, refund behavior for retryable failures and cancellations, where the charge surfaces (job.creditsCharged vs billing.creditsCharged), and the refusal threshold for invalid/duplicate-heavy lists.
Agents need to know what a tool does to the world before calling it. Descriptions should go beyond structured annotations to explain consequences.
Is the description appropriately sized, front-loaded, and free of redundancy?
Front-loaded with the action and mode, followed by the async contract, then billing, then edge cases – a sensible order. It is dense but the length is justified by the tool's complexity; the invalid/duplicate sentence overlaps with the schema description and could be trimmed.
Shorter descriptions cost fewer tokens and are easier for agents to parse. Every sentence should earn its place.
Given the tool's complexity, does the description cover enough for an agent to succeed on first attempt?
Despite an output schema existing, the description still supplies the crucial lifecycle information (job id now, results later via get_bulk_check) and full cost/refund accounting. For a charged, async, non-idempotent mutation, an agent has everything needed to call it correctly and explain the outcome to a user.
Complex tools with many parameters or behaviors need more documentation. Simple tools need less. This dimension scales expectations accordingly.
Does the description clarify parameter syntax, constraints, interactions, or defaults beyond what the schema provides?
Schema coverage is already 100%, so the enum meaning and the duplicate/limit rules are documented there and the description partly repeats them. It does add value beyond the schema by attaching cost semantics to each check mode (1, 1, 2 credits, or one daily-quota unit) and by tying 'audit' to running both checks per domain.
Input schemas describe structure but not intent. Descriptions should explain non-obvious parameter relationships and valid value ranges.
Does the description clearly state what the tool does and how it differs from similar tools?
States a specific verb and resource: 'Queue a lead list for background checking' with the three concrete modes (email, tech, audit) and the domain cap. It also disambiguates from the single-domain siblings by mapping each mode to verify_email_infrastructure, inspect_tech_stack, or comprehensive_audit.
Agents choose between tools based on descriptions. A clear purpose with a specific verb and resource helps agents select the right tool.
Does the description explain when to use this tool, when not to, or what alternatives exist?
Gives clear usage context: this is the batch entry point for up to 1000 domains, and it explicitly routes the agent to get_bulk_check for progress and paged results. What is missing is an explicit inverse rule (e.g. 'use verify_email_infrastructure for a single domain'), though the mode-to-sibling mapping implies it.
Agents often have multiple tools that could apply. Explicit usage guidance like "use X instead of Y when Z" prevents misuse.
unwatch_domainStop Watching DomainADestructiveIdempotentInspect
Stop watching a domain (by watchId or domain); its alerts are deleted with it. Free.
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| domain | No | Alternative to watchId. | |
| watchId | No |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| billing | Yes | |
| removed | Yes |
TDQS
Does the description disclose side effects, auth requirements, rate limits, or destructive behavior?
Goes beyond the annotations by disclosing the actual consequence of the destructive flag: the domain's alerts are deleted along with the watch. It also adds cost information ("Free"), which is context the annotations cannot express. It does not say whether the operation errors on a non-existent watch or whether deletion is recoverable, so it falls 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.
Is the description appropriately sized, front-loaded, and free of redundancy?
One compact sentence with the action, the selectors, and the side effect front-loaded, plus a single-word cost note. Nothing is padded and nothing essential is buried.
Shorter descriptions cost fewer tokens and are easier for agents to parse. Every sentence should earn its place.
Given the tool's complexity, does the description cover enough for an agent to succeed on first attempt?
For a two-parameter tool with an output schema and annotations covering destructiveness and idempotency, the description supplies the key missing piece (alert deletion) plus cost. The remaining gap is the all-optional selector pair, where the description never explains the no-argument case.
Complex tools with many parameters or behaviors need more documentation. Simple tools need less. This dimension scales expectations accordingly.
Does the description clarify parameter syntax, constraints, interactions, or defaults beyond what the schema provides?
Schema coverage is 50% and watchId has no description at all, so the description is the only place the either/or relationship between watchId and domain is reinforced. However it adds no detail on which selector takes precedence if both are given, or what occurs if both are omitted despite zero required parameters.
Input schemas describe structure but not intent. Descriptions should explain non-obvious parameter relationships and valid value ranges.
Does the description clearly state what the tool does and how it differs from similar tools?
States a specific verb+resource ("Stop watching a domain") that is the clear inverse of the sibling watch_domain, and names the two selectors it accepts. It stops short of explicitly naming watch_domain as the counterpart, so differentiation is implied rather than stated.
Agents choose between tools based on descriptions. A clear purpose with a specific verb and resource helps agents select the right tool.
Does the description explain when to use this tool, when not to, or what alternatives exist?
Usage is only implied: an agent infers you call this when you no longer want alerts for a domain. There is no explicit when-to-use/when-not, no guidance on preferring list_watches first to obtain a watchId, and no mention of what happens if neither selector is supplied.
Agents often have multiple tools that could apply. Explicit usage guidance like "use X instead of Y when Z" prevents misuse.
verify_email_infrastructureVerify Email Infrastructure & DeliverabilityARead-onlyIdempotentInspect
Run live DNS checks on a domain's email setup: MX records with provider identification (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Proofpoint...), SPF parsing with recursive include resolution and the 10-lookup limit, DKIM key discovery across 86 common selectors (key type and length), DMARC policy and reporting configuration (with organizational-domain fallback), MTA-STS, TLS-RPT, BIMI and disposable-domain detection. Returns a severity-sorted list of deliverability and spoofing risks with remediation advice, the detected sending platforms, and a 0-100 deliverability score with a per-component breakdown. Use it before outbound campaigns, to validate lead domains, or to audit a prospect's email security. Cost: 1 credit.
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| domain | Yes | Domain to inspect. Accepts a bare hostname ("example.com"), a URL ("https://www.example.com/pricing") or an email address ("jane@example.com"). Scheme, path, port and query are stripped; IDN names are accepted. | |
| checkMtaSts | No | Fetch and validate the MTA-STS policy file over HTTPS when a _mta-sts record exists. | |
| dkimSelectors | No | Extra DKIM selectors to probe, e.g. ["google", "selector1", "k1"]. 86 common provider selectors are always probed. |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| mx | Yes | |
| spf | Yes | |
| bimi | Yes | |
| dkim | Yes | |
| dmarc | Yes | |
| grade | Yes | |
| risks | Yes | |
| score | Yes | |
| domain | Yes | |
| exists | Yes | |
| mtaSts | Yes | |
| tlsRpt | Yes | |
| billing | Yes | |
| summary | Yes | |
| timings | Yes | |
| nxdomain | Yes | |
| checkedAt | Yes | |
| providers | Yes | |
| disposable | Yes | |
| riskCounts | Yes | |
| inputDomain | Yes | |
| isSubdomain | Yes | |
| scoreBreakdown | Yes | |
| organizationalDomain | Yes |
TDQS
Does the description disclose side effects, auth requirements, rate limits, or destructive behavior?
Annotations already establish read-only, idempotent, non-destructive, open-world behavior, and the description adds real context beyond that: live DNS lookups, recursive SPF include resolution capped at the 10-lookup limit, 86 selector probes, organizational-domain DMARC fallback, and a per-call cost of 1 credit. It does not discuss failure modes for unreachable domains or per-call latency, so it falls 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.
Is the description appropriately sized, front-loaded, and free of redundancy?
A single front-loaded paragraph that leads with the action and check inventory before moving to outputs and intended use cases, so the agent gets the essentials first. The dense enumeration of record types and the return-value sentence run long, but each clause carries information rather than filler.
Shorter descriptions cost fewer tokens and are easier for agents to parse. Every sentence should earn its place.
Given the tool's complexity, does the description cover enough for an agent to succeed on first attempt?
Even though an output schema exists and return values need not be restated, the description covers scope, cost, scoring, and remediation output, which is everything an agent needs to decide and call correctly for a read-only multi-check DNS tool.
Complex tools with many parameters or behaviors need more documentation. Simple tools need less. This dimension scales expectations accordingly.
Does the description clarify parameter syntax, constraints, interactions, or defaults beyond what the schema provides?
Schema description coverage is 100%, so all three parameters are already documented with formats, defaults and limits, making 3 the baseline. The description adds only marginal meaning (86 default selectors always probed) that slightly contextualizes dkimSelectors without redefining domain or checkMtaSts.
Input schemas describe structure but not intent. Descriptions should explain non-obvious parameter relationships and valid value ranges.
Does the description clearly state what the tool does and how it differs from similar tools?
Opens with a specific verb and resource ("Run live DNS checks on a domain's email setup") and then enumerates the exact record families inspected (MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MTA-STS, TLS-RPT, BIMI), so the agent can distinguish it from siblings like inspect_tech_stack or comprehensive_audit at a glance.
Agents choose between tools based on descriptions. A clear purpose with a specific verb and resource helps agents select the right tool.
Does the description explain when to use this tool, when not to, or what alternatives exist?
Gives three concrete triggering scenarios (before outbound campaigns, lead-domain validation, prospect security audit), which is strong when-to-use guidance. It stops short of explicit exclusions or naming which sibling to prefer for overlapping broad audits, so it is not a full when/when-not statement.
Agents often have multiple tools that could apply. Explicit usage guidance like "use X instead of Y when Z" prevents misuse.
watch_domainWatch Domain for ChangesAIdempotentInspect
Re-check a domain every 24 hour(s) and raise an alert when its email posture (DMARC or SPF weakened, DKIM key lost, MX provider changed, score drop...) or technology stack (tool added or removed) changes. Alerts are read with get_alerts and can also be pushed to a signed webhook. Watching a domain again updates its checks and webhook. Plan keys include a number of watched domains; prepaid callers pay 1 credit(s) per scheduled check, and a watch pauses (with an alert) when the balance runs out and resumes after a top-up. Watching itself is free.
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| checks | No | What to re-check on schedule. | |
| domain | Yes | Domain to inspect. Accepts a bare hostname ("example.com"), a URL ("https://www.example.com/pricing") or an email address ("jane@example.com"). Scheme, path, port and query are stripped; IDN names are accepted. | |
| webhookUrl | No | Optional https URL that receives each batch of alerts as a signed POST (header x-stackdns-signature: t=<unix>,v1=<hex HMAC-SHA256 of `${t}.${body}`>). Omit to use get_alerts only. |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| watch | Yes | |
| billing | Yes | |
| created | Yes | |
| watchLimit | Yes | |
| webhookSecret | Yes | Signing secret for webhook deliveries, shown only when the watch is created. Store it now. |
TDQS
Does the description disclose side effects, auth requirements, rate limits, or destructive behavior?
Goes well past the annotations by disclosing quota mechanics (plan keys include N watched domains), per-check cost (1 credit per scheduled check), the pause-on-zero-balance-and-resume-after-top-up behavior with an alert, and the free nature of the watch action itself. It also documents the webhook signature header format, which is operational detail no annotation supplies.
Agents need to know what a tool does to the world before calling it. Descriptions should go beyond structured annotations to explain consequences.
Is the description appropriately sized, front-loaded, and free of redundancy?
Front-loaded with the core action and detection list, then billing and delivery details in descending priority. The parenthetical trigger list and "1 credit(s)"/"24 hour(s)" phrasing add minor clutter, but nearly every sentence carries operational information an agent needs.
Shorter descriptions cost fewer tokens and are easier for agents to parse. Every sentence should earn its place.
Given the tool's complexity, does the description cover enough for an agent to succeed on first attempt?
For a recurring-schedule mutation tool with an output schema already defined, the description covers what changes, how alerts are delivered, idempotency of repeat calls, and cost/pause semantics. Nothing material about calling it correctly is left unexplained.
Complex tools with many parameters or behaviors need more documentation. Simple tools need less. This dimension scales expectations accordingly.
Does the description clarify parameter syntax, constraints, interactions, or defaults beyond what the schema provides?
Schema coverage is 100%, so parameters are already well documented. The description still adds meaning by tying the checks enum to concrete alert triggers (email posture vs. technology stack) and clarifying that omitting webhookUrl means pull-only via get_alerts, and that re-watching overwrites existing checks and webhook.
Input schemas describe structure but not intent. Descriptions should explain non-obvious parameter relationships and valid value ranges.
Does the description clearly state what the tool does and how it differs from similar tools?
States a specific verb and resource ("Re-check a domain every 24 hour(s) and raise an alert") plus the exact change conditions it detects (DMARC/SPF weakening, DKIM loss, MX provider change, score drop, tech added/removed). This is clearly separable from siblings like unwatch_domain, domain_history, and get_alerts.
Agents choose between tools based on descriptions. A clear purpose with a specific verb and resource helps agents select the right tool.
Does the description explain when to use this tool, when not to, or what alternatives exist?
Explains the consumption path ("Alerts are read with get_alerts and can also be pushed to a signed webhook") and the idempotent-update semantics ("Watching a domain again updates its checks and webhook"). It does not explicitly contrast with one-off siblings such as comprehensive_audit or verify_email_infrastructure, so the agent must infer when a one-time check is preferable to a recurring watch.
Agents often have multiple tools that could apply. Explicit usage guidance like "use X instead of Y when Z" prevents misuse.
Tool Schema Changelog
Recent tool additions, removals, and schema changes observed during successful MCP inspections.
12 tool updates
v1.0.1- First observed
cancel_bulk_check - First observed
comprehensive_audit - First observed
domain_history - First observed
get_alerts - First observed
get_bulk_check - First observed
inspect_tech_stack - First observed
list_bulk_checks - First observed
list_watches - First observed
start_bulk_check - First observed
unwatch_domain - First observed
verify_email_infrastructure - First observed
watch_domain
TDQS
Scored across 12 tools
Each tool has a clearly distinct role: live tech inspection, live email/DNS verification, combined audit, historical lookup, bulk job lifecycle, and watch/alert lifecycle. The orchestration tool comprehensive_audit overlaps by design but is explicitly an aggregate of the two scan tools, so it is not ambiguous. Bulk and watch tools are separated by resource, preventing misselection.
Most tools follow a predictable verb_noun pattern such as list_watches, inspect_tech_stack, start_bulk_check, get_bulk_check, watch_domain, and unwatch_domain. The main deviations are domain_history (noun phrase) and comprehensive_audit (adjective_noun), which slightly break the convention but remain clear and readable.
Twelve tools are well-scoped for a domain intelligence server covering single-domain scans, aggregation, history, bulk checks, and monitoring. Each tool has a necessary place in the workflow, with no obvious padding or missing control surface.
The set covers the core lifecycle well: live scans, combined audit, historical lookup, bulk job start/status/list/cancel, and watch/alert management. Minor gaps remain around explicit alert management and retrieving full detailed scan results by identifier beyond what domain_history or compact bulk pages provide, but these are workable.
Maintenance
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