What is a Crustdata MCP?
It's an MCP server that lets your agents tap into Crustdata's B2B data platform via tools. Your agents can invoke these tools to search for companies by firmographic filters, enrich contact and company profiles, track job listings, monitor LinkedIn activity, and more.
Crustdata doesn't offer an official MCP server, but you can use one from a third-party platform, like Merge Agent Handler.
How can I use a Crustdata MCP server?
The use cases naturally depend on the agent you've built, but here are a few common ways to use a Crustdata MCP server:
- CRM enrichment on new record creation: When a new company or contact is added to HubSpot, an agent calls Crustdata to pull in employee count, funding stage, and key decision makers, then writes the enriched data back to the CRM record automatically
- Hiring signal monitoring for sales: An agent creates watches on a list of target accounts in Crustdata, and when a company starts posting engineering or sales roles, it flags the account in Slack as a potential buying signal for the sales team
- ICP-based prospecting: A sales agent takes an ideal customer profile (industry, headcount, funding stage) and calls Crustdata to search for matching companies, then outputs a ranked list of accounts to a spreadsheet or sequences them in an outreach tool
- Competitive LinkedIn monitoring: An agent pulls recent LinkedIn posts from a defined list of competitor companies on a weekly schedule and delivers a summarized digest to the product and marketing team in Slack
What are popular tools for Crustdata's MCP server?
Here are some of the most commonly used tools:
search_companies: queries Crustdata's company database using filters like industry, headcount, funding stage, and geography. Use this when an agent needs to build a prospect list or identify accounts that match a specific ICP
enrich_company: returns detailed firmographic data for a specific company, including funding history, employee count, tech stack, and headquarters location. Helpful when an agent needs to fill gaps on a known account before routing it to a sales rep
search_people: finds professional profiles using filters like job title, company, seniority level, and location. Good for workflows that need to surface decision makers at a target account
enrich_person: pulls detailed profile data for a specific individual, including current role, employment history, and contact signals. Call this when an agent needs to verify or expand a contact record before outreach
search_job_listings: returns open job postings at companies, filterable by role type, department, and seniority. Useful for agents that treat hiring activity as a buying signal or use it to qualify accounts
create_watch: sets up a monitor on a company or person that triggers when specified conditions change, such as a funding round or executive hire. Use this when an agent needs to react in real time to account-level events
What makes Merge Agent Handler's Crustdata MCP server better than alternative Crustdata MCP servers?
If you're comparing Merge Agent Handler's Crustdata MCP server against other options, here's what sets it apart:
- Enterprise-grade security and DLP: Merge Agent Handler includes built-in data loss prevention controls that let you block or redact sensitive fields before they reach an agent. For Crustdata, this means you can prevent company financials, personal contact details, and LinkedIn activity data from being surfaced even when the agent has broad search access
- Managed authentication and credentials: Merge handles storage and rotation of Crustdata API credentials on your behalf. Your agents never touch raw API keys, and you don't need to build any credential management logic yourself
- Real-time observability and audit trail: Every tool call against Crustdata is captured: which tool ran, what filters were passed in, and what came back. That log is available for review without any changes to your agent code
- Tool Packs and controlled access: Tool Packs let you bundle specific Crustdata tools with tools from other connectors into a single MCP endpoint, scoped to a specific use case. An agent gets exactly the tools it needs, nothing more
How can I start using Merge Agent Handler's Crustdata MCP server?
You can take the following steps:
1. Create or log into your Merge Agent Handler account and navigate to Tool Packs (collections of connector tools scoped to a specific use case).
2. Create a new Tool Pack, then find and enable the Crustdata connector. Select which tools to include: read tools like search_companies and enrich_person work well for prospecting and enrichment use cases, while create_watch and update_watch are useful if your agent needs to track changes over time.
3. Add a Registered User inside the Tool Pack. This is the identity context under which your agent operates. Merge generates a unique MCP URL scoped to this user once it's created.
4. From the Registered User detail page, authenticate Crustdata by entering your API credentials. Merge stores and manages those credentials going forward.
5. Copy the MCP URL from the Tool Pack detail page and generate an API key from Settings. You'll need both to connect your agent.
6. Add the MCP server to your agent or IDE using the MCP URL and API key. Your Crustdata tools are now accessible through that endpoint.