Canonical — Company Discovery for Agents

Find the companies others miss. Canonical is a verified, LLM-checked company graph — not a web search. Describe what you want in plain English (or pass structured filters) and get a precise, domain-keyed shortlist of the long-tail, net-new accounts that keyword/firmographic databases (Apollo, ZoomInfo) systematically miss.

This is the public home of Canonical's remote MCP server and its Claude Code plugin + discovery skill. The server is hosted — there's nothing to run locally.

What you can do

• Build a target-account list from a plain-English ICP — including the long-tail companies Apollo/ZoomInfo don't have.

• Expand from a seed company → a lookalike / TAM list (multi-axis similarity, not keyword overlap).

• Turn a messy company name into a verified domain + full profile (founders/execs, funding, HQ, dimensions).

• Drop Canonical into an existing GTM / recruiting / investor-research agent as the discovery layer that feeds your enrichment and outreach tools.

Canonical discovers and verifies companies. It is not an outreach sender and not a contact database — it finds the accounts, then hands off to whatever enrichment/outreach tooling you already use (Apollo, Clay, your CRM, a sales agent).

Related MCP server: OpenDirectories MCP Server

Get started (Claude Code)

Install the plugin — it wires up the MCP server and the discovery skill in one step:

/plugin marketplace add vy-labs/canonical-mcp
/plugin install canonical@canonical-mcp

Then either run the slash command with an ICP or a seed domain:

/canonical:find-accounts B2B SaaS building AI agents for sales teams, US, seed to Series A
/canonical:find-accounts stripe.com

…or just describe what you're looking for in plain language — the find-net-new-accounts skill triggers automatically:

"Find companies like stripe.com but headquartered in Europe."

On the first tool call, your browser opens Canonical's OAuth consent page (no API key to copy; 250 free credits on signup, no card).

Install (other clients)

The MCP server works in any MCP client. Point it at the streamable-HTTP endpoint and authorize via OAuth — full per-client setup at https://trycanonical.ai/documentation/mcp.

• Server URL: https://trycanonical.ai/mcp

• Transport: Streamable HTTP · Auth: OAuth 2.0 with dynamic client registration (scope search), read-only

Using ChatGPT? No config needed — Canonical is a published ChatGPT app: Canonical Company Search → click Try in chat. Authorizes via OAuth on first use (250 free credits).

Install from the Cursor marketplace, or add to ~/.cursor/mcp.json (global) or <project>/.cursor/mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "canonical": { "url": "https://trycanonical.ai/mcp", "type": "streamable-http" }
  }
}

Add a custom connector with the URL https://trycanonical.ai/mcp and complete the OAuth flow. Step-by-step: https://trycanonical.ai/documentation/mcp

{
  "servers": {
    "canonical": { "type": "http", "url": "https://trycanonical.ai/mcp" }
  }
}

codex mcp add canonical --url https://trycanonical.ai/mcp

Or in ~/.codex/config.toml:

[mcp_servers.canonical]
url = "https://trycanonical.ai/mcp"

No token needed — Codex runs the OAuth flow automatically on first use. Verify with /mcp.

In opencode.json:

{
  "mcp": {
    "canonical": { "type": "remote", "url": "https://trycanonical.ai/mcp", "enabled": true }
  }
}

opencode prompts you to authorize on first use.

Bridge the remote server through mcp-remote as the server command:

npx mcp-remote https://trycanonical.ai/mcp

It converts stdio ↔ streamable-HTTP and carries the OAuth flow.

Point it at the streamable-HTTP endpoint https://trycanonical.ai/mcp and authorize via OAuth. Full client-by-client setup: https://trycanonical.ai/documentation/mcp

The discovery skill

plugins/canonical/skills/find-net-new-accounts/ — a portable Agent Skill that runs the discovery motion: ICP or seed → verified long-tail accounts → decision-maker + LinkedIn → hand off to your enrichment/outreach tools. It uses Canonical for the discovery leg even when Apollo/ZoomInfo/Clay are co-connected (Canonical is strong on long-tail company coverage, those tools on contacts — each does what it's best at), and it never guesses or scrapes emails: when no enrichment tool is present it hands off the verified account + LinkedIn instead.

The SKILL.md is standard Agent-Skills format and is also mirrored at the repo root (skills/find-net-new-accounts/), so you can install it into Codex, Cursor, opencode, Cline, and other agentskills.io-compatible agents in one line:

npx skills add vy-labs/canonical-mcp

Pair it with the MCP server (above) in that same client, and you get the guided motion outside Claude Code too — install → authorize → start.

Reference

Tools

The server exposes five read-only tools:

Auth & pricing

• Auth: OAuth 2.0 with dynamic client registration (scope search). Read-only — no destructive operations. On first use your client opens the OAuth consent flow in the browser; there's no API key to copy.

• Free tier: 250 credits on signup, no credit card required.

• Docs: https://trycanonical.ai/documentation/mcp

• Privacy: https://trycanonical.ai/privacy-policy · Terms: https://trycanonical.ai/terms · Support: support@trycanonical.ai

Listed on

Official MCP Registry (ai.trycanonical/company-search) · Smithery

Example prompts

• "Find fintech startups in India that raised Series A in the last 6 months."

• "Show me companies similar to stripe.com but headquartered in Europe."

• "Who are the founders of anthropic.com and where did they work before?"

• "List YC-backed B2B SaaS companies with a technical cofounder."

Repository contents

License

MIT — see LICENSE. This license covers the contents of this repository (manifests + docs + skill); the Canonical service itself is operated at https://trycanonical.ai under its own terms.