Developers

API & MCP documentation

Programmatic access to cross-source momentum scores from ten developer and builder communities. Every account gets 100 requests a month free; Relay gives 5,000 for $19 and Radar 10,000 — not a four-figure add-on. The same key works for the REST API and the MCP server, and both spend the same quota.

Authentication

Generate a key in your dashboard — a free account is enough. Keys are shown once and stored only as a hash — if you lose it, revoke and generate a new one. Pass it as a bearer token or in x-api-key:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_live_..." \
  "https://www.signalcrest.app/api/v1/entities?limit=10"

# equivalent
curl -H "x-api-key: sk_live_..." "https://www.signalcrest.app/api/v1/entities?limit=10"

What a key returns

A key returns what its plan sees on the website, so the API never gives away more than the page does.

Plan	Feed	History	Fresh signals
Free	Top 5 in full, corroborated first; the rest as locked rows	7 days	Locked for 48h unless in the free top 5
Scout	The full feed, corroborated first	90 days	Open
Relay, Radar	The full feed, in score order	Full	Open

Locked rows come back with "locked": true and no id, url or first_seen_at. Their score, source, spread and category stay, as they do on the website.

Endpoints

Two layers: entities are trends aggregated across communities (one row per technology) — signals are the item-level evidence underneath them. Start with entities.

GET/api/v1/entities

Entities ranked by cross-source momentum.

Query: category (optional), limit (default 50; max 200 on Relay, Radar and Scout, 30 on the free plan).

Returns name, locked, category, audience, signal_score, lifecycle, item_count, source_count, sources, first_seen_at.

GET/api/v1/entities/:name

Detail for one entity: current composite, score history for your plan's window, and the member items the score aggregates. 404s with the list endpoint named if the entity is unknown.

GET/api/v1/signals

Live item-level signals.

Query: category (optional), limit (default 50; max 200 on Relay, Radar and Scout, 30 on the free plan).

Returns id, locked, source, title, url, category, summary, audience, lifecycle, signal_score, source_spread, spread_entity, first_seen_at.

GET/api/v1/topics/:id

Topic detail including its score history for your plan's window.

Example response

{
  "count": 2,
  "entities": [
    {
      "name": "langchain",
      "locked": false,
      "category": "ai",
      "signal_score": 61.4,
      "lifecycle": "Heating",
      "item_count": 13,
      "source_count": 4,
      "sources": ["github", "hackernews", "npm", "devto"],
      "first_seen_at": "2026-07-19T04:31:12.000Z"
    }
  ]
}

Quotas & errors

100 requests/month on the free plan and Scout, 5,000 on Relay, 10,000 on Radar on a 30-day rolling window, plus a short-term burst limit of 120 requests/minute per key.
Data refreshes every 30 minutes — polling faster than that returns the same scores.
Need more? hello@signalcrest.app — we raise limits case by case.

Status	Meaning
401	Missing or invalid key
403	The signal is locked on your plan: it is fresh and outside the free top 5. It opens to free keys once it is 48 hours old.
404	Unknown topic or entity
429	Burst or monthly quota exceeded
503	API temporarily unavailable, or the quota could not be checked — retry

MCP server

Query the same data from Claude Code, Claude Desktop, or Cursor — ask “what's heating up in AI tooling this week?” and the model pulls live scores. Same key, same quota.

Add to CursorInstalls with a placeholder key — or generate a key in your dashboard, which offers the same button with your real key filled in.

Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http signalcrest https://www.signalcrest.app/api/mcp --header "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_KEY"

Or in any client's JSON config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "signalcrest": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://www.signalcrest.app/api/mcp",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer sk_live_..." }
    }
  }
}

Four tools are exposed:

list_entities — trends aggregated across communities
get_entity — one entity with history and evidence
list_signals — item-level signals
get_topic — one signal with its history

No-key surfaces

Free, no authentication, rate-limited by CDN cache:

/feed.xml — RSS of the top public signals
/api/badge/:id — live SVG score badge for a README
/archive — every scored signal and entity past the 48-hour window

How the scores are computed — every term, weight, and known limitation — is on the methodology page.