Clearspar Part 135 MCP

An MCP server that turns Claude into a US Part 135 market analyst over my live Clearspar FAA operator dataset — 1,890 active Part 135 charter certificate holders scraped from the official FAA xlsx (fleet size derived from tail counts, state-mapped).

It wraps my real, key-gated endpoint GET /api/prospects on clearspar.binnacleai.com. The tools compute — concentration ratios, HHI, fleet distributions, rankings — they don't just dump rows. Ask "How concentrated is Alaska's Part 135 charter market?" and Claude pulls all 303 Alaska operators live and answers with real math.

This is a thin analyst layer over my own production data — not a public FAA API. It's read-only and key-gated.

What it is (honest scope)

The dataset reliably populates three dimensions: operator name, state (2-letter USPS), and fleetSize (FAA tail count), plus a crmStatus pipeline field. Every tool here is built on those. Sparse/empty fields (email, phone, website, style, certificate dates, aircraft type, lat/lng) are deliberately not exposed as tools — see "Not built" below — so the server never fabricates a metric it can't back with data.

Tools

Tool	What it computes
market_summary(state, topN?)	Operator count, total tails, avg & median fleet, largest operator, top-5 tail share, HHI concentration, top operators.
fleet_ranking({state?, limit?})	Operators ranked by fleet size. State-scoped or the full ~1,890 universe.
compare_operators(names[])	Side-by-side of 2+ operators (state, fleet, certNo, CRM status); who's largest, shared state.
competitive_landscape(state)	Fleet-size distribution buckets, top-1/3/5 concentration, HHI with plain-English read, market leaders.
crm_pipeline_summary({state?})	Live counts across CRM stages (NEW/CONTACTED/REPLIED/DEMO/CLOSED/DEAD).

Not built (data doesn't support it)

• Proximity / radius / "operators near X" — there is no lat/lng, base-airport, or ICAO field. Geography is state-level only.
• Operator-type segmentation (bush vs scheduled vs tour) — the style field exists but is NULL in 100% of records.
• Contact / email / phone outreach tools — email, phone, and website are populated on ~0.5% of records (known enrichment gap).
• Certificate-age / aircraft-make-model tools — no cert-issue-date or aircraft-type field exists; only a derived fleetSize integer.

Install

cd clearspar-part135-mcp
npm install
npm run build

Configure

Copy .env.example and fill in the key:

cp .env.example .env

CLEARSPAR_BASE_URL=https://clearspar.binnacleai.com
CLEARSPAR_API_KEY=<the DIGEST_API_KEY value>

The endpoint is key-gated (returns 401 without a valid key — that gate is verified). The key is the DIGEST_API_KEY env var on the takeoff-app Docker container (host 144.202.116.229):

# retrieve without printing it into history/logs
docker exec takeoff-app printenv DIGEST_API_KEY

CLEARSPAR_API_KEY is required — the server refuses to call the API without it.

Claude Desktop config

Add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "clearspar-part135": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/Users/johnthomasair/code/clearspar-part135-mcp/build/index.js"],
      "env": {
        "CLEARSPAR_BASE_URL": "https://clearspar.binnacleai.com",
        "CLEARSPAR_API_KEY": "<the DIGEST_API_KEY value>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. The five tools appear under the plug icon.

Demo prompts

• "How concentrated is Alaska's Part 135 charter market?"
• "Give me a market summary for Hawaii's Part 135 operators."
• "Rank the top 15 Part 135 operators nationwide by fleet size."
• "Compare Grant Aviation and Bering Air."
• "What's the competitive landscape in Texas — is it fragmented or dominated by a few?"
• "Where does my CRM pipeline stand for Alaska?"

How it talks to the API

• GET /api/prospects?state=&crmStatus=&limit=&offset= with header X-API-Key.
• Response: { "total": <count of matching ACTIVE rows>, "rows": [ <Prospect> ] }. The server always filters status: 'ACTIVE'.
• limit is hard-capped at 500 server-side. Any tool needing full coverage paginates by offset until it has all total rows, and caches the ~1,890-row universe for the process lifetime (the data only changes when the FAA scraper re-runs).
• There is no free-text search param, so compare_operators matches names client-side.
• Read-only: only GET is ever called (the route also has POST/PATCH, which this server never uses).

Live data sanity (as of build)

total = 1890 active operators · AK = 303 · HI = 28 · all certType = "135" · all crmStatus = "NEW". Verified against the live endpoint; fleetSize ranges 1–386 nationwide (1–42 in AK).