Downshift/rivalize-mcp

Sourced, dated competitive intelligence for your AI assistant, over the Model
Context Protocol.
## What it does
This server connects Claude, Cursor or any other MCP client to
Rivalize. Your assistant can tear down a competitor's
positioning, pricing, ads, social presence, reviews, hiring and momentum in one
call, search the Rivalize universe of tracked companies, and read the projects,
reports, battlecards, timelines and evidence in your own Rivalize account.
Every answer comes from data Rivalize has collected, with dates and sources,
rather than from a model's memory.
The server is read-only by default. One write tool, addcompetitor, is
available when you opt in with RIVALIZEMCPALLOWWRITES=1.
## Quick start
Requires Node.js 22 or newer (node --version).
1. Create an account at rivalize.ai.
2. Create an API key under Dashboard → Settings → API Keys. Keys start with
rklive. A key from any plan works, including the free plan, which gets
rate-limited reads.
3. Add the server to your client using one of the blocks below.
### Claude Desktop
Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claudedesktopconfig.json (macOS)
or %APPDATA%\Claude\claudedesktopconfig.json (Windows), then restart Claude
Desktop:
json
"mcpServers": {
"rivalize": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "@rivalize/mcp"],
"env": { "RIVALIZEAPIKEY": "rklive..." }
### Claude Code
bash
claude mcp add rivalize -e RIVALIZEAPIKEY=rklive... -- npx -y @rivalize/mcp
### Cursor
Add to .cursor/mcp.json in your project, or ~/.cursor/mcp.json for all
projects:
json
"mcpServers": {
"rivalize": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "@rivalize/mcp"],
"env": { "RIVALIZEAPIKEY": "rklive..." }
### Cline
In Cline, open the MCP Servers panel, choose Configure, then Configure MCP Servers. This opens clinemcpsettings.json. Add:
json
"mcpServers": {
"rivalize": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "@rivalize/mcp"],
"env": { "RIVALIZEAPIKEY": "rklive..." }
Save the file. The rivalize server appears with a green dot after about 10 to 15 seconds (the first start downloads the package). On Windows, if it does not start, use "command": "cmd" and "args": ["/c", "npx", "-y", "@rivalize/mcp"].
If you ask Cline to install it for you, point it at llms-install.md.
### Any MCP client (stdio)
The server speaks MCP over stdin and stdout. Configure your client to launch:
| Setting | Value |
| Command | npx |
| Arguments | -y @rivalize/mcp |
| Environment | RIVALIZEAPIKEY=rklive... |
| Transport | stdio |
On Windows, some clients cannot launch npx directly because it is npx.cmd.
Use cmd as the command and /c npx -y @rivalize/mcp as the arguments
instead.
## Tools
Thirteen read-only tools are always available. addcompetitor is registered
only when RIVALIZEMCPALLOWWRITES is set to 1, true or yes; without
it, the tool does not exist for the client.
| Tool | Access | What it does | Key arguments |
| teardowncompetitor | read | One-call strategy teardown of a competitor as Markdown: positioning, pricing, ads, social, reviews, hiring, momentum and weaknesses to attack, with when the data was last refreshed | domain (required) |
| listuniversecompanies | read | Search the Rivalize universe, the cross-customer dataset of tracked companies | q, category (slug), layer, limit (1-100), offset |