MCP tools
Every tool the Boardwalk MCP server exposes, which plane it belongs to, and what it costs.
AI-native analysts and MCP clientsData and PropTech platforms
Tools are grouped into planes. The plane is the sentence a model needs most and is least likely to infer: whether a call spends money.
| Tool | Plane | Cost | What it is for |
|---|---|---|---|
describe_data | reference | Free | What the dataset can and cannot answer. The right first call for a model that has never used Boardwalk. |
list_locations | reference | Free | States, counties and cities, with the ids the filters take. |
get_taxonomy | reference | Free | The land-use vocabulary — types, subtypes, asset classes, action types. |
count_projects | analytics | Free | How many records match, and what delivering them would cost. Takes the same filters as get_projects, so it is a true preflight rather than an approximation. |
analyze_projects | analytics | Free | Group and measure. Answers "how many / what mix / which is biggest" without returning any record identity. |
rank_jurisdictions | analytics | Free | Leaderboards over cities, counties or states, with a minimum denominator. |
get_ai_search_result | leads | Free | Collect a finished asynchronous AI search. The records were charged when the job settled; reading them is free. |
get_credit_balance | account | Free | Remaining credits for the period. Free, and worth calling before any metered tool. |
get_projects | leads | 1 credit per record | The records themselves. 1 credit each. |
get_project | leads | 1 credit per record | One record in detail. 1 credit. |
get_document | leads | 1 credit per record | A source meeting document. 1 credit. |
ai_search_projects | leads | 1 credit per record | Natural-language search. 1 credit per confirmed record delivered. |
Guardrails built into the tools
- Every record-returning tool names a free tool that prices it first, and the tool description points at it.
- Record-returning tools cap
limitwell below the API's own page ceiling, andlimitis required rather than optional — an omitted limit used to mean the maximum. - A call that would spend more than a small floor of credits requires an explicit
maxCreditsacknowledgement in the arguments. - Every tool calls the public API. None of them reaches an internal endpoint, so the plan gate, the geographic ceiling and the usage log apply identically to a model and to a human.
Ready to make a call?
A free Boardwalk trial includes API access and a sandbox key. Counting, filtering, the location tree and the analytics plane cost nothing, so you can evaluate the data before you spend a credit.