@pipeworx/social-signal

How much a topic is being discussed across social networks, and how active an account is. Keyless.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1743+ live data sources. This is an independent, unofficial integration — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream provider.

Tools

• social_topic_volume(...) — post counts for a topic over time, bucketed, across Bluesky, Mastodon, Reddit and Hacker News.
• social_account_activity(...) — posting cadence and engagement for one account on Bluesky or Mastodon.

Auth

None.

Coverage — a directional proxy, not total social volume

Covers Bluesky, Mastodon, Reddit and Hacker News. X/Twitter is excluded — its API is paid — so results measure a partial slice of social media. Every tool description says this, because "social volume" that silently omits the largest network invites a wrong conclusion about a trend.

A network that cannot be reached returns null for its buckets rather than 0. That distinction matters: a measured zero and an unobserved gap are different facts, and Mastodon in particular is often unreachable from Cloudflare egress.

Per-network quirks handled in-pack

• Reddit — search.rss prepends subreddit entries (t5_ ids dated 2010) which faked a 16-year coverage floor; only t3_/t1_ ids are counted.
• Hacker News — Algolia caps pagination at 1,000 and returns nbHits: 0 past it, so the pack keeps the maximum nbHits seen rather than the last.
• Bluesky — burst-throttles at roughly 10 requests refilling ~1/s, so buckets are swept newest-first under a 12-request budget and any gap lands at the far edge of the window.

Data sources

• Bluesky: https://public.api.bsky.app
• Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/api/v2/search
• Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/search.rss
• Hacker News: https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "social-signal": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/social-signal/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/social-signal/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1743+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

No MCP client? Call it over HTTP

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/social_topic_volume \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"topic":"artificial intelligence","days":7}'

No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/social_topic_volume. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.

Standalone (no gateway account)

This package also runs as a local stdio MCP server — no Pipeworx account, no gateway round-trip:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "social-signal": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-social-signal"]
    }
  }
}

Or run it directly to confirm it starts:

npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-social-signal

It speaks MCP over stdin/stdout and answers initialize/tools/list/tools/call for only this pack's tools — none of the shared meta-tools the gateway connection above adds. Same source, same tools, no ask_pipeworx routing.

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Social Signal data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides
• pipeworx.io

License

MIT