DesktopInsights

★ 2

from andrewschreiber

Technographics for desktop apps (like builtwith.com)

🔥🔥🔥✓ VerifiedAccount requiredNeeds API keys

⌁ labsco summary — our analysis, not the vendor's

What it is — An MCP server exposing "technographics for desktop apps" (like builtwith.com) — the SDKs, frameworks, and dependencies used by 12,000+ macOS and Windows applications.

What you get —

App tech lookup — lookup_app, e.g. "What SDKs does Figma use?" or "What error tracking does Slack use?"
SDK search — search_apps, e.g. "Which apps use Sentry?" or "Find all Electron apps that use Stripe"
Comparison — compare_apps ("Compare Slack and Discord's tech stacks")
Discovery — list_sdk_categories for the 11 tracked SDK categories

Requirements — a DESKTOPINSIGHTS_API_KEY from desktopinsights.com/settings/api.

Cost snapshot — server is MIT and open source, but it fronts the Desktop Insights service, which requires an account/API key; usage is governed by that service (no prices shown).

Setup effort — one-liner: claude mcp add desktopinsights -e DESKTOPINSIGHTS_API_KEY=your-api-key -- npx -y desktopinsights-mcp.

Our take — Niche but genuinely useful for competitive/technographic research on desktop software. Caveat: coverage is capped at the ~12,000 apps in the database, so obscure apps may return nothing.

Source: the project README — summarized 2026-07-08.

⌁ readme from github — mirrored (latest on GitHub ↗)

Desktop Insights MCP Server

MCP server for Desktop Insights — look up SDKs, frameworks, and dependencies used by 12,000+ macOS and Windows desktop applications.

Tools

lookup_app

Look up what SDKs and dependencies a specific app uses.

"What SDKs does Figma use?"
"Look up the technology stack of 1Password"
"What error tracking does Slack use?"

search_apps

Search apps by SDK usage, runtime, platform, or developer.

"Which apps use Sentry for error tracking?"
"Find all Electron apps that use Stripe"
"What apps does Microsoft publish on macOS?"

compare_apps

Side-by-side technology stack comparison.

"Compare Figma vs Sketch"
"Compare Slack and Discord's tech stacks"

list_sdk_categories

List all 11 tracked SDK categories with example values. Useful for discovering what filters are available.

Development

npm install
npm run build
DESKTOPINSIGHTS_API_KEY=your-key node build/index.js

Copy & paste — that's it

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "desktopinsights": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "desktopinsights-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "DESKTOPINSIGHTS_API_KEY": "your-api-key"
      }
    }
  }
}

Before it works, you'll need: DESKTOPINSIGHTS_API_KEY

Quick Start

Get your API key at desktopinsights.com/settings/api.

Claude Code

claude mcp add desktopinsights -e DESKTOPINSIGHTS_API_KEY=your-api-key -- npx -y desktopinsights-mcp

Claude Desktop

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

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "desktopinsights": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "desktopinsights-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "DESKTOPINSIGHTS_API_KEY": "your-api-key"
      }
    }
  }
}

Cursor

Add to .cursor/mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "desktopinsights": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "desktopinsights-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "DESKTOPINSIGHTS_API_KEY": "your-api-key"
      }
    }
  }
}

Configuration

Environment Variable	Required	Default
`DESKTOPINSIGHTS_API_KEY`	Yes	—
`DESKTOPINSIGHTS_API_URL`	No	`https://desktopinsights.com`