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idea-reality-mcp

How to check if someone already built your app idea — automatically.

idea-reality-mcp is an MCP server that scans GitHub, npm, PyPI, Hacker News, and Stack Overflow to check if your startup idea already exists. It returns a 0–100 reality score with evidence, trend detection, and pivot suggestions — so your AI agent can decide whether to build, pivot, or kill the idea before writing any code.

When to use this: You're about to start a new project and want to know if similar tools already exist, how competitive the space is, and whether the market is growing or declining.

Project status (August 2026): Maintenance mode. The tool works, stays free & open source, and the hosted API remains up; bug reports are reviewed, but no new features are planned.

Not just checking — building it? After a reality check, open your idea as a public project on AngelRun — ship updates, climb the season, and get seen by angels.

How it works

1. Describe your idea in plain English — e.g. "a CLI tool that converts Figma designs to React components"
2. idea_check scans 5 databases in parallel (GitHub repos + stars, Hacker News discussions, npm/PyPI packages, Stack Overflow questions)
3. Get a 0–100 reality score with trend direction (accelerating/stable/declining), top competitors, and AI-generated pivot suggestions

What you get

You: "AI code review tool"

idea_check →
├── reality_signal: 92/100
├── trend: accelerating ↗
├── market_momentum: 73/100
├── GitHub repos: 847 (45% created in last 6 months)
├── Top competitor: reviewdog (9,094 ⭐)
├── npm packages: 56
├── HN discussions: 254 (trending up)
└── Verdict: HIGH — market is accelerating, find a niche fast

One score. Six sources. Trend detection. Your agent decides what to do next.

Try it in your browser — no install

Quick Start

# 1. Install
uvx idea-reality-mcp

# 2. Add to your agent
claude mcp add idea-reality -- uvx idea-reality-mcp   # Claude Code

3. Ask your agent: "Before I start building, check if this already exists: a CLI tool that converts Figma designs to React components"

That's it. The agent calls idea_check and returns: reality_signal, top competitors, and pivot suggestions.

Other MCP clients

Claude Desktop / Cursor — add to config JSON:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "idea-reality": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["idea-reality-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Config location: macOS ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json · Windows %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json · Cursor .cursor/mcp.json

Smithery (remote, no local install):

npx -y @smithery/cli install idea-reality-mcp --client claude

Setup & Configuration

First-time guided setup:

idea-reality setup

This walks you through:

1. Terms acceptance — data collection policy and disclaimer
2. Platform detection — auto-detects Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Cline
3. Config generation — prints the exact JSON snippet for your platform
4. Health check — verifies MCP server, tools, and scoring engine

Platform Configs

idea-reality config              # interactive menu
idea-reality config claude_code  # auto-installs via CLI
idea-reality config cursor       # prints Cursor config
idea-reality config raw_json     # generic MCP JSON

Supported: Claude Desktop · Claude Code · Cursor · Windsurf · Cline · Smithery · Docker

Health Check

idea-reality doctor        # core checks (~2s)
idea-reality doctor --full # + GitHub API, all 6 sources, Anthropic API

Usage

MCP tool call (any MCP-compatible agent):

{
  "tool": "idea_check",
  "arguments": {
    "idea_text": "a CLI tool that converts Figma designs to React components",
    "depth": "deep"
  }
}

REST API (no MCP required):

curl -X POST https://idea-reality-mcp.onrender.com/api/check \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"idea_text": "AI code review tool", "depth": "quick"}'

Python:

import httpx

resp = httpx.post("https://idea-reality-mcp.onrender.com/api/check", json={
    "idea_text": "AI code review tool",
    "depth": "deep"
})
print(resp.json()["reality_signal"])  # 0-100

Free. No API key required.

Why not just Google it?

Your AI agent never Googles anything before it starts building. idea_check runs inside your agent — it triggers automatically whether you remember or not.

	Google	ChatGPT	idea-reality-mcp
Who runs it	You, manually	You, manually	Your agent, automatically
Output	10 blue links	"Sounds promising!"	Score 0-100 + evidence
Sources	Web pages	None (LLM)	GitHub + HN + npm + PyPI + PH + SO
Price	Free	Paywall	Free & open-source (MIT)

Modes

Mode	Sources	Use case
quick (default)	GitHub + HN	Fast sanity check, < 3 seconds
deep	GitHub + HN + npm + PyPI + Stack Overflow	Full competitive scan

Scoring weights

Source	Quick	Deep
GitHub repos	60%	22%
GitHub stars	20%	9%
Hacker News	20%	14%
npm	—	18%
PyPI	—	13%
Stack Overflow	—	10%

If a source is unavailable, its weight is redistributed automatically — so the deep-mode weights above are renormalised over the sources that actually answered.

Product Hunt was removed on 2026-07-17. It had carried 14% of the deep-mode weight since launch and had never returned a single result: the adapter asked for posts(search: $query), and Product Hunt's API has no text search on posts at all (Field 'posts' doesn't accept argument 'search'). Its weight is now redis