AuditAE MCP Server: Run AI Citation Audits Inside Claude and Cursor

AuditAE's MCP server lets any MCP-aware AI client — Claude Desktop, Cursor, Cline — check whether AI engines cite your brand without leaving the conversation. The same audit engine behind the AuditAE dashboard runs as a set of native tools your client calls mid-chat: you ask, in plain language, whether ChatGPT or Perplexity recommends you for a prompt, and the answer comes back inline. No dashboard, no copy-paste, no separate tab.

Checking your AI visibility usually means breaking flow. You're drafting a comparison page in Cursor or working through positioning in Claude Desktop, and to find out who the engines actually recommend you have to stop, open a dashboard, and paste prompts one at a time. This post explains what an MCP server is, what the AuditAE server exposes, how to wire it up in about two minutes, and what a real run looks like.

What is an MCP server?

An MCP server is a program that exposes tools and data to an AI assistant through the Model Context Protocol (MCP) — an open standard, introduced by Anthropic in late 2024, for connecting AI models to the outside world. In plain terms, the meaning of "MCP server" is a universal adapter: instead of every AI app building one-off integrations, an MCP server publishes a standard set of "tools," and any MCP-aware client can discover and call them during a conversation.

The pieces are simple:

• The client is the AI app you already use — Claude Desktop, Cursor, Cline, or the MCP inspector.
• The server is the thing exposing capabilities — in this case, AuditAE's audit engine.
• The transport is how they talk. The AuditAE server speaks standard MCP over stdio, so it runs locally alongside your client.

When a server is connected, its tools appear in the client's tool list. The model decides when to call them based on what you ask. You never invoke a tool by hand — you describe what you want, and the client picks the right tool and fills in the arguments. That's the whole point: capabilities show up where you're already working, in natural language.

Why run AI citation audits from your AI client?

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is now a measurement problem. Buyers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews for recommendations, and whether your brand gets cited in those answers is invisible unless you check it directly. The dashboard does that well — but it lives in a different tab from where the work happens.

The AuditAE MCP server removes the context switch. Drafting a "best CRM for startups" comparison in Cursor? Ask your editor whether the engines already cite you for that exact phrasing, without opening anything. Thinking through positioning in Claude? Check a competitor claim the moment you make it. The audit runs against the real engines in parallel and hands the result back in the same conversation — no scraping, no screenshots.

Which tools does the AuditAE MCP server expose?

The server exposes 40 tools spanning citation checks, technical audits, schema, and WordPress automation — the same registries the dashboard and REST API use. These four are the ones you'll reach for first: two run live engine checks that draw from your credit balance, and two are bundled and run free.

Because the server speaks standard MCP over stdio, any MCP-aware client can use these — there's nothing AuditAE-specific about the wiring beyond your API key.

How do you connect the AuditAE MCP server to Claude or Cursor?

Three steps, about two minutes.

1. Get an API key. In the dashboard, go to /dashboard/keys, click New key, label it, and copy it. The key is shown once, so store it before you close the tab. Keys are org-scoped and look like ae_live_….

2. Add the server to your client config. For Claude Desktop or Cursor, drop this into your MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "auditae": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@auditae/mcp"],
      "env": {
        "AUDITAE_API_KEY": "ae_live_…",
        "AUDITAE_API_BASE_URL": "https://auditae.app"
      }
    }
  }
}

3. Restart the client. The tools appear in the tool list. That's the whole setup.

The server validates your key on every call against your live org context and balance, so a revoked or out-of-credit key fails fast instead of silently doing nothing.

What does a real audit run look like?

Once it's connected, you don't call tools by hand — you ask a question. For example:

Is Linear cited when someone asks ChatGPT and Perplexity for the best project management tool for a small startup?

Your client picks check_brand_citation, fills in the brand, prompt, and engines, and runs it. What comes back, per engine: cited true or false, the position the mention showed up at, the competitors named alongside you, and the sources behind the answer.

Two things are worth knowing from the raw output:

• Google AI Overviews often returns nothing — because Google doesn't surface an overview for most queries. That's a real result, not an error, and it's worth tracking on its own.
• position is a character index into the response text, not a rank. Read it as "how early in the answer the brand appears," not "what place it came in."

Who is the AuditAE MCP server for?

• If you write content, you can check a claim the moment you make it. Draft a comparison page in Cursor, then ask your editor whether the engines already cite you for that comparison — without opening anything.
• If you run an agency, wire one key into your own Claude Desktop and check any client's citations from the same place you do everything else.
• If you build, the MCP server and the REST API hit the same metered pipeline. Same data, same billing, whether it's a tool call from Claude or a fetch from your own app. We're priced like infrastructure because that's what this is.

How much does the AuditAE MCP server cost?

There's no subscription and no API tier to upgrade to. Live checks are $0.05 each — the same price through the dashboard, the REST API, or the MCP server. The two bundled tools (extract_competitors_from_text and run_technical_audit) run free.

Sign up and $5 of free credit lands in your account — around 100 checks, enough to run real audits from your editor before you decide whether to top up.

Get a key →