CNC Compass MCP¶

Sourcing a machined part starts with a search that returns brochures and ends with a supplier you have to verify by hand. CNC Compass returns the supplier records instead, each with match reasons and the sentence from the source page that supports every field.

Server type: Remote (Streamable HTTP), no key
Endpoint: https://cnccompass.com/mcp
Auth: none for the MCP tools; anonymous API callers share a per-IP quota
Live check: keyless POST initialize returned HTTP 200 (serverInfo CNC Compass 1.30.0, protocol 2025-03-26, tools, prompts and resources capabilities)
Tools: 3 from tools/list (search_suppliers, get_supplier, list_facets)
Index: 507 published supplier records declaring CNC milling, aluminum or anodizing; 472 declare CNC milling, 317 CNC turning, 226 sheet metal fabrication, 160 grinding, 99 five-axis, 91 EDM
Built by: CNC Compass (cnccompass.com)

Why This Matters for Operators¶

The catalog already carries manufacturing knowledge and supplier price drift. What it did not carry is the first step: turning a sourcing brief into a shortlist that can be checked line by line.

CNC Compass does that in a way that is unusually honest about evidence. A record is marked Verified only after a person reviewed it, only reviewed records are indexable and in the sitemap, and the site states plainly that a supplier field is a claim from the cited source rather than a guarantee of capability. Each supplier row carries the quote that supports the match, so a buyer can go straight to the source page and check the claim instead of trusting a score.

Tools & Capabilities¶

Tool	What it does
`search_suppliers`	Takes a natural-language sourcing brief and returns a normalized brief, the fields it could not fill, a follow-up question, and matching supplier records with scores, match reasons, matched fields and evidence quotes
`get_supplier`	Returns one published supplier record in full by slug: identity, location, capabilities, certificates and the source of each field
`list_facets`	Lists the values the search can filter on with how many published suppliers declare each

Live Check¶

Called search_suppliers with "aluminum CNC machining with anodizing, medium volume". It returned a parsed brief (material Aluminum, process CNC milling, finish Anodizing), an explicit missing: ["quantity"], a follow-up question about supplier location, and supplier rows carrying score, the three match reasons, a verified-source-factory flag, the marketplace profile URL, an inquiry URL, and the evidence quote from the supplier's own page. The stated count behind the answer was 507 records.

Then list_facets with field=process returned the real distribution rather than a rounded claim: 472 CNC milling, 317 CNC turning, 226 sheet metal fabrication, 160 grinding, 99 five-axis, 91 EDM, 66 3D printing, 17 Swiss machining.

Installation¶

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "cnc-compass": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://cnccompass.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

A JSON search API also exists at https://cnccompass.com/api/search (GET ?q= or POST) and an OpenAPI description is published, so the same query works outside an MCP client.

Limits Worth Knowing¶

The corpus is Chinese machining suppliers, largely sourced from public company pages and marketplace listings. That is deep for that market and nothing else: a buyer sourcing in Europe or Mexico gets no coverage.
507 records is a curated index, not a market census. Absence of a supplier says nothing about that supplier.
The search returns partial briefs on purpose and asks for what is missing. A quantity or tolerance the brief did not state shows up as a follow-up question, not as an assumption.
Anonymous access is rate-limited per IP, and the site publishes a machine-access manifest rather than a price list, so heavy programmatic use should start from the published limits rather than discovering them.
Records state capability claims, not capacity, lead time or price. The inquiry path is a marketplace form, and everything after the shortlist is ordinary sourcing work.

FAQ¶

Is a Verified record a quality guarantee?¶

No. Verified means a person reviewed the record and only those records are indexed and listed in the sitemap. Every field is still a claim from the cited source, which is why the record ships the quote alongside the value.

Can it search by material or process directly?¶

Yes. list_facets returns the filter values and their record counts, and search_suppliers accepts material, process, finish and similar fields alongside the free-text query, so a structured filter and a brief can be combined.

Why catalogue this when MechanoFab covers manufacturing?¶

MechanoFab answers how a process works. This answers who can make the part, with a record per supplier and a quote per field. Knowledge and sourcing are different steps in the same job, and the catalog had the first without the second.

Integration with CorpusIQ¶

CorpusIQ is the connector layer that lets AI assistants read the systems a business already runs on - accounting, payments, CRM, email, files and analytics - and answer with the source named. It is read-only by design: it retrieves data and never writes to, or acts in, a connected system, which is what makes it safe to point at live accounts.

This page is part of the CorpusIQ directory, the reference we maintain for the MCP server and agent-skill ecosystem. Run alongside CorpusIQ, a third-party server like this one can be combined with a company's own business data in a single answer.

See what CorpusIQ connects