HireSignal — Hiring-Intent Signals for B2B Sales

Turn live job postings into buying signals your AI agent can call.

Live demo against the hosted instance — run it yourself with node scripts/demo.mjs.

When a company posts for a VP Sales, RevOps Manager, or Data Security Analyst, it's telling you it has a pain and an approved budget — typically 60–90 days before it starts researching vendors. HireSignal is an MCP server that surfaces those hiring signals so your sales/GTM agent can find in-market accounts, score them, and time outreach.

Plug it into Claude, Cursor, Cline, or Windsurf and ask:

• "Which fintechs posted a RevOps or Sales Ops role in the last 7 days?" (→ in-market for CRM/sales tooling)

• "Is Stripe scaling or freezing its data team right now?" (→ account expansion = budget unlocking)

• "Compare hiring momentum across these 5 target accounts."

• "Which companies started hiring for Snowflake this month?" (→ buying signal for adjacent data tooling)

Also works for recruiting intel, comp benchmarking, and market research — but it's built sales-first.

The server speaks the Model Context Protocol over SSE so it can be hosted remotely (Railway, Fly, anywhere with HTTPS).

Try it instantly (hosted demo)

A live instance is running with a shared, rate-limited demo key. Point any MCP client at:

URL:    https://hiresignal-mcp-production-d4d9.up.railway.app/sse
Header: Authorization: Bearer hs_demo_0b25932234553fd38b571f12c1439bfd

The demo key is heavily rate-limited and shares a small monthly data quota — expect QUOTA_EXHAUSTED during busy periods. For a dedicated key with higher limits, get in touch.

Related MCP server: open-sales-stack

Tools

First-party corpus (the data moat)

For a curated set of high-value accounts, HireSignal doesn't resell aggregated data — it scrapes each company's own ATS (Greenhouse / Ashby / Lever / Workday) directly and stores a time-series of every posting in a local SQLite file. That makes company_hiring_velocity a real signal (roles added and closed over time, with the company's actual posted dates), returns data_source: "first_party_ats", costs nothing per query, and — because the value is the accumulating history — is the one thing a competitor can't backfill.

npm run build && npm run ingest     # ~50 companies, ~12k open roles, ~$0

The server can keep this fresh itself (set INGEST_INTERVAL_HOURS + a persistent HIRESIGNAL_CORPUS_PATH). Companies outside the corpus transparently fall back to the aggregator. Full design, schema, and how to add companies: CORPUS.md.

Configuration

Set these environment variables on the server (Railway → Variables, or .env locally):

SERPAPI_KEY=...               # https://serpapi.com — used by search_jobs, job_alert_check
JSEARCH_RAPIDAPI_KEY=...      # https://rapidapi.com/letscrape-6bRBa3QguO5/api/jsearch
HIRESIGNAL_API_KEYS=k1,k2     # comma-separated allowlist of client keys
PORT=3000                     # default

# First-party corpus (optional but recommended — see CORPUS.md)
HIRESIGNAL_CORPUS_PATH=./data/corpus.db   # SQLite corpus location (use a volume in prod)
INGEST_INTERVAL_HOURS=6                    # if set, server self-ingests on boot + interval

A data source must be available: either an ingested corpus (npm run ingest) or a provider key. get_server_status reports "ok" when the corpus is active or a key is set, and "degraded" when there is neither.

HIRESIGNAL_API_KEYS accepts one or more comma-separated keys (or use HIRESIGNAL_API_KEY for a single key). If neither is set the server runs in open mode — it logs a startup warning and accepts unauthenticated calls, which is convenient for local dev but must not be used in any deployment exposed to the network.

Run locally

npm install
cp .env.example .env   # fill in keys
npm run dev            # tsx watch
# → http://localhost:3000/sse
# → http://localhost:3000/health

Production build:

npm run build
npm start

Deploy to Railway

npm install -g @railway/cli
railway login
railway init
railway up
# then set SERPAPI_KEY and JSEARCH_RAPIDAPI_KEY in the Railway dashboard

railway.json wires up Nixpacks, the npm ci && npm run build step, and /health for health checks.

Connecting from MCP clients

Claude Desktop

Claude Desktop's stable config supports stdio MCP servers natively and remote (SSE) servers via the mcp-remote bridge. Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS) or %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json (Windows):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "hiresignal": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "mcp-remote",
        "https://your-hiresignal.up.railway.app/sse",
        "--header",
        "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_HIRESIGNAL_API_KEY"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. The 8 HireSignal tools will appear in the tools menu.

Cursor

Open Cursor → Settings → MCP → "Add new MCP server":

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "hiresignal": {
      "url": "https://your-hiresignal.up.railway.app/sse",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_HIRESIGNAL_API_KEY"
      }
    }
  }
}

Cline / Windsurf

Both support remote SSE MCP servers. Point them at https://your-hiresignal.up.railway.app/sse with the same Authorization: Bearer … header.

Local stdio fallback

Most clients only need the SSE URL above. If a client requires stdio, point it at the mcp-remote bridge as in the Claude Desktop example.

How auth and limits work

• API key: the server reads it from Authorization: Bearer …, x-api-key, or ?api_key=… (prefer the header — query params end up in proxy/access logs). The presented key is SHA-256 digested and compared in constant time against the digests of every key in HIRESIGNAL_API_KEYS. Unknown or missing keys get a 401 with {"code": "AUTH_FAILED"}. Only the first 16 hex chars of the digest are logged, never the key itself. The /messages POST endpoint re-checks the key on every call and rejects it if the session was opened under a different key, so a leaked sessionId is not enough to take over a session.

• Rate limit: 30 tool calls per API key per minute (token bucket, in-memory). On overflow, tools return { "code": "RATE_LIMITED", "retry_after_seconds": N }.

• Cache: job search results are cached for 15 minutes per (query, location, date_posted) tuple to protect upstream quota. job_alert_check always bypasses the cache.

• Quota errors: when an upstream returns 429 or signals quota exhaustion, the tool returns { "code": "QUOTA_EXHAUSTED", "retry_after_seconds": N, "hint": "hiresignal.io/pricing" }.

Testing

npm test         # vitest run with mocked upstream APIs
npm run typecheck

License

MIT.