Potter

GTM research tools as an MCP for Claude Code. Open source, BYOK, no hosted tier.

What it is

Install Potter and Claude Code gets 21 tools for B2B research: LinkedIn profile/company/posts lookups, web scrape and search, browser automation primitives, and five composite tools that fan out across providers in one call.

Reasoning runs on your existing Claude subscription (Pro or Max). Bring your own keys for Apify, Firecrawl, and Browserbase. Pay the providers directly. No billing, no auth, no hosted tier. MIT.

Quick install

claude mcp add potter --scope user -- npx -y potter-mcp

Then edit ~/.claude.json under mcpServers to add your provider keys:

"potter": {
  "command": "npx",
  "args": ["-y", "potter-mcp"],
  "env": {
    "POTTER_APIFY_TOKEN": "apify_api_xxx",
    "POTTER_FIRECRAWL_API_KEY": "fc-xxx",
    "POTTER_BROWSERBASE_API_KEY": "bb_live_xxx",
    "POTTER_BROWSERBASE_PROJECT_ID": "xxx"
  }
}

npx -y auto-pulls the latest published version on each Claude Code session start; no global install needed.

One-time for browser tools in LOCAL mode: npx playwright install chromium. Restart Claude Code.

Try it

In Claude Code:

• "Research this person: https://www.linkedin.com/in/satyanadella/"
• "Find me the head of platform engineering at Vercel"
• "Is Linear hiring backend engineers? linear.app"
• "Extract the pricing plans at https://www.anthropic.com/pricing as JSON"

21 example prompts in examples/.

What's in the box (21 tools)

Composites (5) (fan out across providers in one call):

• potter_research_person: profile + posts + current company + news
• potter_research_company: LinkedIn page + 6 site pages + news, optional focus bias
• potter_summarize_linkedin_posts: posts + tf-idf themes + notable quotes
• potter_find_decision_maker: company + employees + token-overlap scoring
• potter_extract_structured: Firecrawl JSON-format extraction with depth-capped schema

LinkedIn primitives (3): potter_linkedin_profile, potter_linkedin_company, potter_linkedin_posts.

Web primitives (3): potter_web_scrape, potter_web_search, potter_web_crawl.

Browser (9): potter_browser_open, _click, _fill, _scroll, _extract, _inspect_styles, _screenshot, _close, _act (experimental, gated by POTTER_ENABLE_EXPERIMENTAL_BROWSER_ACT).

Utility (1): potter_provider_status: verifies provider keys, optionally with live API calls.

Full reference in docs/tools.md.

Provider stack

| Provider | What Potter calls it for | Signup | |---|---|---| | Apify | LinkedIn profile / company / posts / employees (actor choices in docs/provider-benchmarks.md) | https://apify.com | | Firecrawl | Web scrape / search / crawl / structured extract | https://firecrawl.dev | | Browserbase | Stagehand-managed browser sessions (alternative to local Playwright) | https://browserbase.com | | Anthropic | Required for natural-language browser actions in LOCAL mode | https://console.anthropic.com | | OpenAI | Alternative LLM for natural-language browser actions in LOCAL mode | https://platform.openai.com |

All providers charge against your own account credits; Potter takes nothing. Free / paid tiers vary; check each provider's current pricing page.

Required: Apify + Firecrawl. Required for browser tools: Browserbase OR local Playwright. Required for natural-language browser actions (potter_browser_click, potter_browser_fill, potter_browser_extract with instruction, potter_browser_scroll with to_selector, and potter_browser_act): Browserbase (bundled LLM) OR an Anthropic/OpenAI key on LOCAL. The other browser primitives (open, direction-only scroll, inspect_styles, screenshot, close) work without any LLM.

Apify actor overrides

Potter ships with benchmarked defaults (see docs/provider-benchmarks.md). If an actor breaks or you want a different one, override by env var:

POTTER_APIFY_LINKEDIN_PROFILE_ACTOR=apimaestro/linkedin-profile-batch-scraper-no-cookies-required
POTTER_APIFY_LINKEDIN_COMPANY_ACTOR=apimaestro/linkedin-company-detail
POTTER_APIFY_LINKEDIN_POSTS_ACTOR=apimaestro/linkedin-batch-profile-posts-scraper
# default already; override to harvestapi if you're on an Apify paid plan and want richer per-employee data
POTTER_APIFY_LINKEDIN_EMPLOYEES_ACTOR_INTERNAL=harvestapi/linkedin-company-employees

Potter has a hard-coded normalizer per actor; if you override to an actor we don't have a normalizer for, the tool returns a structured error pointing you at src/providers/apify-actors.ts to add one.

Note on find_decision_maker: the default apimaestro employees actor is pay-per-result with no subscription, so it works on the free Apify $5 sign-up credit (~20 runs). The alternative harvestapi employees actor returns richer per-employee data but hard-walls free Apify users at 10 runs total, requiring an Apify Starter plan ($49/mo) afterward. See docs/provider-benchmarks.md for full rationale.

Acceptable use

Potter is for legitimate B2B research: prospecting, account intelligence, candidate research, market research, competitive analysis. It is not for:

• Mass cold-outreach automation
• Scraping personal information at scale for redistribution
• Automating LinkedIn actions (connection requests, messaging, comment spam)

You are responsible for complying with the terms of service of every third-party provider Potter integrates with (Apify, Firecrawl, Browserbase, LinkedIn, Anthropic, OpenAI). Browser tools (potter_browser_*) actively reject any URL or active page on linkedin.com; use the LinkedIn primitives instead.

Potter stores nothing. Every call is pass-through.

LinkedIn operational note

Potter does not scrape LinkedIn directly. It calls third-party data providers (Apify Harvest, Apimaestro) with your own API keys. Those providers run their own scraping infrastructure and absorb the LinkedIn-side risk.

For high-volume use, run Potter from a dedicated machine or VPN. Heavy LinkedIn calls under your normal IP could trigger LinkedIn's anti-automation against accounts on your network.

Configuration reference

All Potter env vars are prefixed POTTER_. Full list in .env.example. Critical ones:

• POTTER_APIFY_TOKEN, POTTER_FIRECRAWL_API_KEY: required for LinkedIn + web tools.
• POTTER_BROWSERBASE_API_KEY + POTTER_BROWSERBASE_PROJECT_ID: required for browser tools (or fall back to local Playwright).
• POTTER_ANTHROPIC_API_KEY / POTTER_OPENAI_API_KEY: optional, only for potter_browser_act LLM fallback when Browserbase isn't available.
• POTTER_MAX_RESPONSE_BYTES=20000: response cap (recommend not raising; Claude Code's context cost goes up fast).
• POTTER_CONCURRENCY_LIMIT=5: provider call concurrency.
• POTTER_BROWSER_SESSION_TIMEOUT_MINUTES=10: browser session idle timeout.
• POTTER_ENABLE_EXPERIMENTAL_BROWSER_ACT=true: enable LLM-driven potter_browser_act (experimental in v1).
• POTTER_ENABLE_PING=false: potter_ping health check, off by default to match the locked 21-tool surface.

Troubleshooting

See docs/troubleshooting.md for: Playwright install failures, libnss3 on Linux, Node version mismatches, stuck browser sessions, tool-selection misfires, partial-failure envelope shapes.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Maintained by one person in spare time. Bug fixes, provider-adapter PRs, docs, and example prompts all welcome. New tools or composites get a discussion first (open an issue) so we can keep the surface coherent.

Security and data handling

Potter stores nothing. Every request is pass-through to the configured provider with your own keys. Logs go to stderr only and pass through a redaction layer that masks any configured token value before write. No telemetry, no analytics, no remote calls outside the providers you configure.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Brandon Guerrero, my Clay Bootcamp mentor, who encouraged me to build this.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.