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., "@job-search-mcp Check this job posting for visa sponsorship and whether it's senior or not."
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.
An MCP server for job hunting under a visa constraint.
If you need sponsorship, most job search tooling answers the wrong question. It tells you a role exists. It does not tell you whether the employer can legally hire you, or whether the "mid-level" title is hiding a senior brief, or that the company posting the role is a recruitment agency that holds no licence at all.
This server answers those questions. It exposes four tools over the Model Context Protocol so an AI assistant can check them itself instead of guessing.
Tool | Answers |
| Does this employer hold a UK Skilled Worker licence, and how much can I trust the match? |
| Are there hard bars here? Is the title telling the truth about seniority? |
| What is live right now, minus the agencies? |
| Have I already applied here? |
Related MCP server: Work Researcher MCP
The obvious way to check a sponsor licence is to search the register for the company name. That is how this started, and it is wrong often enough to be dangerous.
Company names collide. To match Pimberly against its registered name Pimberly Software Development Limited, you have to strip words like "Software" and "Limited". That same normalisation turns Minerva Defence into minerva, which matches thirteen unrelated companies: a furnishing business, a credit agency, a supported-living provider.
So check_sponsor returns a confidence grade rather than a boolean:
high — the distinctive part of the name matched exactly, once.
verify — something matched, but it could be coincidence. Confirm the employer's
registered legal entity, then look that name up.
none — nothing matched. This is not proof they cannot sponsor. Many licensed
employers trade under a name unlike their registered one.
Real cases that shaped this:
Searched | Matched | What was true |
Minerva Defence | 13 unrelated "Minerva" rows |
|
Prevail | Prevail Technology Limited (Poole) | The employer is |
MAGIC | MAGIC SOFTWARE SERVICES LTD | Right answer, wrong evidence. The employer is |
TransPerfect | PERFECT DIGITAL LTD | Matched on the word "perfect" |
eFinancialCareers | eFinancialCareers Ltd | Correct and useless: licensed, but a job board. Roles under its name belong to unnamed third parties |
screen_posting reads the body, not the titleA posting titled "Software Engineer" opened with "As a Senior Software Engineer you will" and asked for someone to join "the founding team". Another titled "Software Engineer (Java Mid)" named a senior grade three paragraphs down. Title-based filtering misses both.
screen_posting also catches hard bars that no amount of tailoring survives:
You must be a UK citizen and have lived in the UK for the past 10 years.
You must already hold high-level UK security clearance.and the one that matters most when you need sponsorship, from a company that holds an A-rated licence:
We are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role. Candidates who need visa
sponsorship now or will need it in the future will not be considered.A licence means a company can sponsor. It does not mean it will.
search_roles returns a funnelUK job boards are dominated by recruitment agencies, and an agency does not hold the sponsor licence for a role it advertises. Filtering them out is essential and brutal: a typical search drops from seven results to one.
One result with no explanation looks like a bug. So the tool returns what each stage removed:
{
"totalFromSource": 7,
"funnel": { "fromSource": 7, "afterAgencyFilter": 2, "afterSalaryAndAge": 1 },
"notes": ["5 of 7 results were recruitment agencies or job boards. ..."]
}Unpublished salaries are kept, never filtered out. Silence about pay is not evidence of low pay.
npm install && npm run buildDownload the current register (about 11 MB, updated regularly):
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/register-of-licensed-sponsors-workers
Save it as data/register.csv, or point SPONSOR_REGISTER_PATH at it.
{
"mcpServers": {
"job-search": {
"command": "node",
"args": ["/absolute/path/to/job-search-mcp/dist/index.js"],
"env": {
"SPONSOR_REGISTER_PATH": "/absolute/path/to/data/register.csv",
"REED_API_KEY_FILE": "/absolute/path/to/.reed-api-key"
}
}
}
}Variable | Required | Purpose |
| no | Register CSV. Defaults to |
| for | Path to a file containing the key. Preferred: the secret lives in one place and the client config holds only a path |
| alternative | The key inline. Simpler, but copies the secret into your MCP config |
| no | NDJSON application history |
No credential is ever read from a file inside the repo, and the register is gitignored.
Or with the Claude Code CLI:
claude mcp add job-search --scope user \
--env SPONSOR_REGISTER_PATH=/path/to/data/register.csv \
--env REED_API_KEY_FILE=/path/to/.reed-api-key \
-- node /path/to/job-search-mcp/dist/index.jsnpm test54 tests. Every fixture is a real posting or a real register entry that defeated an
earlier version of this code. The Reed tests mock fetch, so the suite runs offline
and costs no API quota.
Two bugs the suite caught while it was being written:
£40,000-85,000 parsed as a flat £40,000, because the second figure omits the
currency symbol. Against a salary threshold, that is the difference between "clears
it" and "does not".
An agency filter written as \brecruit\b never matched Recruitment or
Consultancy. Roughly fifty agencies passed straight through.
core() deliberately destroys information. Stripping descriptors is what makes
brand-to-legal-name matching work, and it is exactly what causes false positives. The
confidence grade prices that trade-off instead of hiding it.
Absence is not a negative. none carries a caveat saying so. The costliest error in
this domain is concluding that an unlisted employer cannot sponsor.
Read-only. The server reads the application ledger; it never writes to it. Recording an outcome is a decision a person should make.
MIT
Read the local application ledger. Use it before applying to avoid duplicate submissions to the same employer, and to see what has already been tried. Read-only.
Inputs: company.
Look up whether a company holds a UK Skilled Worker sponsor licence. Returns a confidence grade, because company names collide: a match on a generic word like 'global' or 'minerva' is not evidence. A result of 'none' does NOT mean the employer cannot sponsor; it means they are not listed under that name, and the registered legal entity should be checked instead.
Inputs: company (required), skilledWorkerOnly.
Screen a posting for hard eligibility bars (citizenship, residency, existing security clearance, explicit refusal to sponsor), for seniority the body implies but the title hides, and for salary and stack. Run this before investing effort in an application.
Inputs: title (required), description (required).
Search live UK job listings via Reed, excluding recruitment agencies and job boards, which cannot sponsor roles they merely advertise. Returns a funnel showing what each filter removed, so a small result set can be explained rather than mistaken for an error. Requires REED_API_KEY.
Inputs: keywords (required), limit, location, maxAgeDays, +1 more.
Recent tool additions, removals, and schema changes observed during successful MCP inspections.
Loading tool schema changelog…
Scored across 4 tools
Each tool addresses a clearly distinct aspect: sponsor verification, posting screening, application history, and job searching. No overlap in purpose and each has a specific trigger condition.
Three tools follow a verb_noun pattern (check_sponsor, screen_posting, search_roles), but application_history deviates as noun_noun. The naming is still descriptive and predictable, with only minor inconsistency.
Four tools is well-scoped for a focused job-search assistant, covering the core workflow without bloat. Each tool contributes a distinct function and none seem redundant.
The surface covers search, screening, sponsor checks, and local history, which addresses the primary workflow. A minor gap is the lack of a tool to update or add to the application ledger, but this may be handled externally.
Job search for your AI: save jobs, research companies, keep stories, track applications.
Job-search tracker for AI agents: applications, stale follow-ups, skills gaps, H-1B lookup.
AI job matching in your assistant: ranked offers, tailored resumes, application tracking.
Job applications done for you: check applications and interviews, get prep, apply to a job by URL.
