Connecting an AI agent (MCP)
The API speaks the Model Context Protocol (MCP) — the open standard AI assistants and agent frameworks use to call external tools. Point a client at the MCP Endpoint and it discovers the API as tools it can call on your behalf:
Code
There are two ways to connect, and either one works.
With the API Key you already hold — send it the same way your own code does, as an
Authorization: Bearer header on the connection. This is the path for server-to-server
integrations, and it is the simpler one when there is no person present to sign in. See
Authentication.
By signing in, with no key at all — some clients can connect you by sending you here to approve the connection, so you never handle a key. See Connecting with your account instead of a key, below.
Whichever way the client connects, there is no separate MCP key, no separate Balance, and no separate price: an agent spends the same Credits from the same Account as your own code does.
The tools an agent discovers
| Tool | Does | Credits | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
score_property | Scores a property address — the same Scored Call as POST /v1/predict | one Credit | Available |
score_property_batch | Scores several addresses in one call and returns one answer per property — the same Metered Call as POST /v1/predict/batch | one Credit per property submitted | Available |
property_history | Reads one property's recorded story — the chain of title, any flips, the listing state and recorded permit work. The same Metered Call as POST /v1/history | one Credit | Available |
validate_request | Checks a request without scoring it — the same check as POST /v1/validate | free | Available |
Four tools, and the table above is all of them. A connected agent cannot reach anything your API Key could not reach directly, and cannot spend Credits any faster than the same calls made over HTTP.
A tool is not a versioned path. These tools always serve the current shape of the answer, and there is deliberately no second, older-shaped tool to choose between. A version path's deprecation window does not apply here: when the answer's current version changes, the tools change with it, descriptions included. The Versioning page is the versioning policy in full.
The contract is identical
A tool call re-enters the same operations documented in the API reference —
same validation, same error catalogue, same
idempotency semantics. property_history takes exactly one of
address or property_id, exactly as the HTTP endpoint does: a call carrying both, or
neither, is rejected before any Credits are consumed. An agent that already holds the
property_id of a comparable property from a score_property answer can send it
straight back to ask about that exact record. A score_property call that fails for a reason
the refund policy covers is refunded exactly as the HTTP call would be, and every error
an agent can see is one documented in the reference. Nothing about the MCP path changes
what a call costs or what you are promised.
Connecting with your account instead of a key
Some clients can connect by signing you in, so you never handle a key at all. If yours offers a Connect button, use it: the client sends you to Investorlift Data Services, you sign in with the account you already have, and you approve the connection on our own screen. Nothing is pasted anywhere, and the client never sees your API Key or your password.
What you are approving is spelled out before you approve it. A connected app can act as your account: it can score properties — and each Scored Call spends Credits from your Balance at your rate — and read account details such as your Balance. There is no separate Balance and no separate price; it is the same Account, metered the same way.
Approved connections are listed under Connected apps in your Account settings, each with the date it was connected. Disconnecting one cuts its access off: the app's next call fails authentication and spends nothing.
Everything else on this page still applies. The tools are the same tools, the contract is the same contract, and one Scored Call costs one Credit at every Tier whichever way the client connected.
Server-to-server integrations do not need any of this. If your code holds a key, keep using the key — it is the simpler path when there is no person present to sign in.
Setting up a client
The API reference entry for the MCP Endpoint shows copy-paste setup for common
clients — Claude, Cursor, VS Code and others — with the URL and header pre-filled.
Server-to-server MCP clients work without any of that: POST to the endpoint above with
your Authorization header.