Hiresignal

HireSignal — Hiring-Intent Signals for B2B Sales

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

[HireSignal live demo — three tool calls against the hosted server]

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/sseHeader: 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.

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_checkJSEARCH_RAPIDAPI_KEY=...      # https://rapidapi.com/letscrape-6bRBa3QguO5/api/jsearchHIRESIGNAL_API_KEYS=k1,k2     # comma-separated allowlist of client keysPORT=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 installcp .env.example .env   # fill in keysnpm run dev            # tsx watch# → http://localhost:3000/sse# → http://localhost:3000/health

Production build:

npm run buildnpm start

Deploy to Railway

npm install -g @railway/clirailway loginrailway initrailway 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 APIsnpm run typecheck

License

MIT.