waas-mcp

Superseded by Bookface MCP. This repository will no longer be maintained. Use YC's hosted Bookface MCP server for Work at a Startup and the rest of Bookface.

Bookface MCP supports every recruiting workflow from this standalone server, including job authoring, applicant triage, pipeline management, messaging, notes, and candidate creation with resumes. It also adds semantic candidate sourcing, contact reveal, and tools for fundraising, company launches, scheduling, and more.

Connect by URL and sign in with your YC account. The hosted server requires no local Python package or waas login.

Connect to Bookface MCP

Add this URL in an MCP client that supports Streamable HTTP and OAuth:

https://api.ycombinator.com/v1/mcp

MCP access must be enabled for your account. Available tools depend on your Bookface role, company access, and connected services; hiring tools require Work at a Startup access.

Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http --scope user bookface https://api.ycombinator.com/v1/mcp

Open /mcp in Claude Code, select bookface, and authenticate with your YC account. Then ask:

Check my WAAS hiring readiness and show my company's jobs.

The agent can use hiring.status to check readiness and current sourcing budgets, then hiring.list_jobs to list your jobs.

If you previously registered this standalone server as waas, remove that entry after connecting:

claude mcp remove waas

Codex

Register the hosted server and authenticate from your terminal:

codex mcp add bookface --url https://api.ycombinator.com/v1/mcp
codex mcp login bookface

Follow the browser authentication flow and sign in with your YC account. Start a new Codex session and use /mcp to check that Bookface is connected. Then ask:

Check my WAAS hiring readiness and show my company's jobs.

If you previously registered this standalone server in Codex as waas, remove that entry after connecting:

codex mcp remove waas

See the official Codex MCP documentation for additional configuration options.

Work at a Startup

Bookface MCP offers 22 hiring actions covering recruiting from sourcing through pipeline management.

Everything from this server

Workflow	Bookface MCP tools
List applicants across your company, filter by job, state, date, or response needed, and use compact triage views	hiring.list_applicants
Read a candidate's profile, company status, and internal notes together	hiring.get_candidate
Read up to 25 candidates in one call	hiring.get_candidates
Update candidate state, archive reason, or pipeline stage	hiring.update_candidate
Read message threads and send candidate messages	hiring.get_candidate_messages, hiring.send_candidate_message
Add internal candidate notes	hiring.add_candidate_note
List jobs, inspect all editable fields, create drafts, edit postings, publish, and unpublish	hiring.list_jobs, hiring.get_job, hiring.create_job, hiring.update_job
Read complete pipelines, including the virtual Applied stage, and move candidates between stages	hiring.get_pipeline, hiring.move_candidates
Create private candidates with optional PDF, DOC, or DOCX resumes	hiring.prepare_resume_upload, hiring.create_candidate
Check authenticated hiring readiness	hiring.status

Additional hiring capabilities

Capability	What you can do
Semantic candidate sourcing	Describe the experience and skills you need, combine semantic and keyword search with structured filters, and find candidates beyond your existing applicants using hiring.search_candidates.
Search beyond the first page	Read stored matches with hiring.get_search_results, request another retrieval batch with hiring.extend_search_results, and poll for results without starting the search over.
Location-based sourcing	Use hiring.geocode to resolve locations into coordinates and geographic bounds for candidate searches.
Explicit contact reveal	Unlock sourced candidates' email addresses with hiring.reveal_candidate_contact. General candidate browsing keeps sourced email private.
Contact and outreach budgets	See your company's current contact-reveal and cold-outreach usage, caps, and remaining allowance with hiring.status.
Richer application details	Read application messages, custom answers, contact details, and resume links for a job with hiring.get_job_applicants.
More predictable batch operations	Candidate batches identify unavailable IDs. Pipeline moves validate the entire batch before moving anyone and return the IDs moved.

For eligible candidate accounts, Bookface also provides tools to search jobs, manage a candidate profile, and apply to YC startups.

Beyond hiring

The same connection gives your agent access to other Bookface workflows, subject to your account's permissions:

Area	Capabilities
YC network and knowledge	Search companies, founders, investors, forum posts, launches, startup-library content, and jobs; export supported search results to CSV.
Fundraising	Manage investor prospects and rounds, create investor decks, manage tracked pitch-deck links, inspect viewing analytics, and request or read pitch feedback.
Demo Day	Gather presentation materials, draft or revise slides, review presentations, and check readiness.
Company and founder profiles	Read and update profiles, inspect company goals, post company news, and read sales-call feedback.
Launching your company	Track launch progress, draft and publish Launch Bookface posts, and manage YC directory and Launch YC steps.
Scheduling and events	Browse, request, and book partner office hours; view batch events; create community events; and manage YCal scheduling links.
Runway planning	Read and edit cash runway scenarios and explore revenue, spending, and fundraising assumptions.
Community and resources	Find and redeem YC deals, recommend founders to YC, and read accessible YC Slack channel transcripts.
Documents and meeting context	Find company batch documents and retrieve accessible office-hour, Circleback, and Granola transcripts.
Research and prospecting	Search the web, read pages, find similar companies, and research prospective customers or partners outside the YC network.

Try asking:

• "Find backend engineers with distributed-systems experience who were active in the last 30 days."
• "Review applicants who need a response and summarize the strongest matches for this job."
• "Create a hidden draft of a product designer job posting."
• "Show my investor pipeline and which prospects need a follow-up."
• "Find YC companies that match our ideal customer profile and export the results."
• "Show upcoming partner office hours and our batch events."

Migrating existing workflows

The hosted tools preserve the workflows with updated names and arguments. Use the schemas advertised by your MCP client when adapting saved prompts or scripts.

• Candidate reads: hiring.get_candidate includes the profile, status, and notes that previously required separate tools. Batch reads take an array of short_ids.
• Job authoring: Put creation fields inside job_attributes and partial updates inside job_updates. All 23 editable fields from this server are supported.
• Pagination: Follow next_cursor for applicant and pipeline listings. Pipelines are returned in bounded pages, including empty stages and Applied.
• Resume uploads: Call hiring.prepare_resume_upload, upload the file using its returned HTTP instructions, then pass resume_upload_token to hiring.create_candidate. Resumes may be up to 5 MiB; your agent needs the ability to upload a file over HTTP.
• Tool names: Hiring actions use names such as hiring.list_jobs; some clients display those names with underscores.

The previous standalone setup instructions and changelog remain available in this repository's Git history.