Shipstry
Shipstry

Shipstry MCP Server

Shipstry runs a read-only Model Context Protocol server. Point an MCP client at the endpoint below and an agent can search the launch registry, read any ship week, look up weekly and monthly winners, and benchmark how crowded a category is.

Everything it returns is already public on this site. There is no API key, no OAuth, and no write access.

https://shipstry.com/mcp

Streamable HTTP, POST only — GET returns 405, and there are no sessions. Supports MCP revisions 2026-07-28, 2025-11-25, 2025-06-18.

What an agent can ask

Seven tools, grouped by the question they answer. The names are the ones an agent sees in tools/list.

QuestionTool
What categories exist, and how many products are in each?list_categories
Is there a tool that does X? What shipped in a category this week?search_launches
What is this product, in full — description, tags, awards, maker?get_launch
What launched in a given week, and how is that week going?list_ship_week
Who took gold, silver, and bronze last week, or last month?get_winners
How crowded is this category, and what does a winning launch look like?get_category_landscape
Is this website already listed on Shipstry?check_url

Benchmarking, not just search

get_category_landscape aggregates a category over a window of ship weeks: how many products launched, the vote distribution (mean, p50, p75, p90, max), the top launches, how many medals were awarded, and the tags that show up most often. It answers how crowded a space is and what a winning launch looks like there — a question no search endpoint can answer.

Connect a client

Every current MCP client can reach a remote server, but the config key differs between them.

Cursor

.cursor/mcp.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "shipstry": { "url": "https://shipstry.com/mcp" }
  }
}

VS Code / Copilot

.vscode/mcp.json
{
  "servers": {
    "shipstry": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://shipstry.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Claude Code

one command
claude mcp add --transport http shipstry https://shipstry.com/mcp

Other clients take the same URL under a different field name:

  • Windsurf — serverUrl
  • Gemini CLI — httpUrl
  • Codex CLI — url in TOML
  • Claude Desktop, claude.ai, ChatGPT — Connectors UI

Tool reference

ToolRequiredOptionalReturns
list_categories——Every category slug with its approved-product count
search_launches—query, category, tag, sort, limit, offsetMatching launches with votes, ship week, awards, and canonical URL
get_launchone of id, slug, url—Full record: description, tags, awards, maker name
list_ship_week—shipWeek, category, sort, limit, offsetOne week's cohort, plus the week's label and status
get_winners—scope, period, limitMedal winners with product details and vote counts
get_category_landscapecategoryweeksLaunch volume, vote distribution, top launches, medals, frequent tags
check_urlurl—Whether the URL is already listed, and the matching product

search_launches sorts by hot, new, week, or month. list_ship_week sorts by votes, recent, or random. get_winners takes a week or month scope. get_category_landscape defaults to the last 12 ship weeks, up to 52.

Behavior worth knowing

  • Read-only. Nothing here writes, votes, submits, or spends.
  • Approved products only. Pending and rejected submissions never appear.
  • Fog Mode. During 13:00–19:00 UTC the in-progress ship week is hidden the same way the website hides it. Product records return votes as null with voteHidden set to true; list_ship_week returns a shuffled order; get_category_landscape drops that week from its window entirely, because an ordered top list would leak the ranking even with the numbers redacted; and search_launches ordered by week falls back to recency. Settled weeks are unaffected.
  • Citable results. Every record carries its canonical Shipstry URL.
  • Ship weeks are Mondays. They are keyed YYYYMMDD in UTC. list_ship_week also returns a readable range label and a status of open, closed, fog, or scheduled.
  • Rate limited. The limit is a guardrail against runaway loops, not a quota. If you want to index the whole registry, get in touch instead of hammering the endpoint.

Example

Ask how the AI category has been going over the last twelve weeks:

curl -s -X POST https://shipstry.com/mcp \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'MCP-Protocol-Version: 2026-07-28' \
  -H 'Mcp-Method: tools/call' \
  -H 'Mcp-Name: get_category_landscape' \
  -d '{
    "jsonrpc": "2.0",
    "id": 1,
    "method": "tools/call",
    "params": {
      "name": "get_category_landscape",
      "arguments": { "category": "ai-ml", "weeks": 12 },
      "_meta": {
        "io.modelcontextprotocol/protocolVersion": "2026-07-28",
        "io.modelcontextprotocol/clientCapabilities": {}
      }
    }
  }'

Response, trimmed — product fields and URLs removed for length:

{
  "category": "ai-ml",
  "fromWeek": "20260727",
  "toWeek": "20261012",
  "launched": 41,
  "voteTotal": 1893,
  "weeksCovered": 12,
  "voteDistribution": {
    "sampleSize": 41, "mean": 46.2,
    "p50": 38, "p75": 61, "p90": 94, "max": 212
  },
  "topLaunches": [
    { "name": "...", "votes": 212, "shipWeek": "20260907" }
  ],
  "medals": { "gold": 12, "silver": 12, "bronze": 12 },
  "frequentTags": [{ "slug": "ai", "name": "ai", "count": 18 }]
}

What is not included

The server is a read-only view of the public registry, and it never writes. These stay on the website:

  • Submitting, editing, or scheduling a product.
  • Voting, commenting, or reading notifications.
  • Account, draft, profile, or order data.
  • The Trade Ports backlink directory, which is a paid product.

One consequence worth calling out: check_url only sees approved listings. If a URL is still in review, it reports isDuplicate: false.

Where this data comes from

Every answer can be checked by hand on the public site:

  • Explore — search and sort the whole registry.
  • Ship weeks — every closed week and what shipped in it.
  • Weekly winners — medal archives.
  • Topics — use-case archives built from product tags.
  • llms.txt — the plain-text map of this site for agents.

Frequently asked questions