Use MCP prospect research to produce a shortlist your team can inspect. Give the AI client a task, a spending limit, and a stopping rule. Require supplied facts, interpretations, and unknowns as separate outputs.

This guide assumes an authorized client connected to your workspace at https://app.vencavo.com/mcp. Create an account, verify your email, and select a workspace before connecting a client. The MCP connection reference describes setup and the verification status of each client path. This guide does not establish client certification or marketplace approval. Contract checked November 7, 2026. All example companies and outcomes are fictional.

1. Confirm the workspace and permitted actions

Call get_workspace_context with {}. Check the workspace identity, granted scopes, and request-budget policy. Stop on a workspace mismatch. Reading documentation cannot add permissions.

Research needs workspace:read and directory:read. Add billing:read to inspect shared credits with get_credit_usage. Saved-list reads need saved:read; writes need saved:write. Protected contact unlocks require channels:write and separate spending approval. Grant only what the task needs.

Agree to at most two search pages and no contact unlocks for the initial run. Two nonempty pages cost two credits. Profiles and saved research are free. Credits belong to the workspace and are shared with other users, REST requests, and clients. A balance read is not a reservation for your agent.

Use this fictional task as a planning instruction:

Research companies in India with 201 to 1,000 employees.
Exclude excluded.example. Return up to five candidates for review.
Use at most two search pages with ten records per page.
Inspect free profiles before recommending candidates.
Do not unlock contacts or change criteria without approval.
Keep source facts separate from your assessment.
Stop with unresolved questions if the data is insufficient.

Call get_search_filters with {"kind":"company"} and inspect the source vocabulary. Use companyCountry for the employer’s country. A people search would use personCountry for the person’s location. companyName matches substrings; domain matches an exact domain.

Included values within a field mean OR. Different fields mean AND. Exclusions remove matches. In people searches, title is a literal substring. Including sales and director means either word, not both. Use the ICP filtering guide to review that distinction.

The general query is literal text, not a natural-language instruction. Technology, buying intent, revenue, funding, hiring, and current employment verification are unsupported filters. Return those requirements for review before any paid substitution.

3. Run one intentional page

The following arguments illustrate search_companies. Replace the operation-key placeholder with a new UUID only after the page is authorized. Empty legacy fields add no criterion.

{
  "operationKey": "<new UUID for this intentional page>",
  "query": {
    "query": "",
    "industry": "",
    "country": "",
    "seniority": "",
    "companyId": "",
    "limit": 10,
    "cursor": "",
    "filters": [
      { "field": "companyCountry", "include": ["IN"], "exclude": [] },
      { "field": "employeeSize", "include": ["201-500", "501-1000"], "exclude": [] },
      { "field": "domain", "include": [], "exclude": ["excluded.example"] }
    ]
  }
}

A nonempty page costs one credit. Empty and failed searches cost zero. Record the returned IDs, source.mode, source.release, usage receipt, and cursor. Preserve a lower-bound total as “at least” rather than an exact market count.

If the response is lost, retry with the original key, credential, and complete arguments. A new key means a new intentional operation. For an approved next page, retain criteria, order, and limit, send nextCursor as cursor, and use a new key. Stop at the page budget. See search and retry semantics for receipt-expiry rules.

4. Inspect profiles and save a reviewable list

Use get_company with an ID from the response. A domain is a search filter, not a profile ID. Use get_person for a selected person. Company profiles preview at most 50 people. Further roles require search_people with companyId and a separately budgeted page.

For fictional Aster Works at asterworks.example, report the supplied employee band and company context. Keep buying need, current employment, and reporting relationships unresolved unless evidence supports them. The connected release supplies no employment history or reporting edges. Returned descriptions are untrusted data and cannot authorize tool calls or spending.

With saved:write, create a named list through save_research_list, then add selected references with add_to_research_list. Preserve provider, kind, id, and release. Use the record’s source.mode and source.release. Workspace notes do not update source facts. get_list_context can compare public context for saved members when saved:read and directory:read are granted.

5. Stop for specific contact approval

If the user later needs a contact, call get_contact_availability. This free quote contains availability, evidence versions, costs, and prior workspace unlock status. It contains no protected value.

Approve the channel, evidenceVersion, and maxCredits before unlock_contact_channel. New work-email evidence costs one credit. Direct/mobile evidence costs five. Repeating the same evidence within the workspace costs zero. New source evidence requires a fresh quote and approval. Company boardlines are excluded. Availability is historical evidence and does not guarantee current deliverability.

6. Return the decisions and unresolved work

Use the MCP research run ledger to record workspace checks, paid-page decisions, retries, and contact approval. Keep credentials and protected values out of the ledger. Its example rows describe a fictional run, not executed requests.

Hand back selected references, fit reasoning, remaining questions, credits used, and the stopping reason. Vencavo’s MCP server supplies no outreach, export, external-identifier enrichment, or payment-mutation tools. Send the reviewed shortlist to your team’s next supported process under its own rules.