{
  "id": "14-help-scout",
  "slug": "help-scout",
  "normalized_name": "help scout",
  "name": "Help Scout",
  "vendor_url": "helpscout.com",
  "category": "inbound-plg-chat",
  "what_it_does": "A shared inbox, live chat and knowledge-base product for customer-facing teams, with an MCP server that gives an AI agent read access to conversations, customers, organisations, reporting and Docs content, each teammate connecting under their own credentials and permissions.",
  "ai_features": "The product ships an AI inbox assistant, AI drafts and an AI Answers resolution feature on its paid tiers. The MCP server is deliberately not one of them: it is read-only for new connections, so the intelligence is entirely on the client side.",
  "mcp_status": "official",
  "mcp_url": "https://mcp.helpscout.net/mcp (docs: https://docs.helpscout.com/article/1779-connect-your-ai-agent-with-help-scout-to-search-conversations-and-pull-reports)",
  "mcp_auth": "oauth. The vendor's article states the connector registers itself, so the OAuth client ID and secret fields in the AI client are left empty, and warns explicitly that a Help Scout App ID and secret from My Apps are for the REST API and \"won't work for the connector\".",
  "api_gate": "paid - the vendor's own article states \"Your Help Scout account must have API access, which is included on the Standard, Plus, and Pro plans\", and adds that report tools require Plus or Pro because the reporting API is not available on Standard. Published self-serve prices are Standard $25, Plus $45 and Pro $75 per user per month, with Pro routed to \"Book a Demo\"; a Free tier exists but does not carry API access and therefore cannot reach the MCP server.",
  "revops_role": "Inbound support and success inbox for SMB and mid-market teams, and, through a read-only MCP surface, a way to let an agent answer questions about customer history and support load without any ability to write into the queue.",
  "tier": "RESEARCHED",
  "last_checked": "2026-09-07",
  "sources": "https://docs.helpscout.com/article/1779-connect-your-ai-agent-with-help-scout-to-search-conversations-and-pull-reports, https://www.helpscout.com/pricing/, https://mcp.helpscout.net/mcp",
  "notes": "Verified 2026-09-07: POST of an MCP initialize to https://mcp.helpscout.net/mcp returned HTTP 401 with {\"error\":\"invalid_token\",\"error_description\":\"No authorization provided\"}, confirming a live auth-gated server, and the endpoint is printed in Help Scout's own help-centre article. Note the domain: helpscout.net, not helpscout.com, which is a discovery trap for anyone checking only the marketing domain. TWO PLAN GATES STACK INSIDE ONE PRODUCT and both are documented by the vendor: Standard and above reaches the server at all, but the report tools return nothing on Standard because the reporting API is not included there, so an agent on a Standard plan will silently get an empty answer to a reporting question rather than an error a user can act on. Access is stated to be read-only for new connections with writes on the roadmap, so this is currently the safest inbox in this file to hand an unsupervised agent. The article also records a client-side gate that has nothing to do with Help Scout: on Claude Team and Enterprise only an Owner can add a custom connector, and on ChatGPT Business and Enterprise a workspace admin must enable Developer mode first. Help Scout was not listed in Claude's connector directory as of the article's own text, so it is added as a custom connector by URL. 2026-09-07: https://mcp.helpscout.net/mcp returned 401 to an MCP initialize POST. helpscout.net is Help Scout's own domain (https://mcp.helpscout.net/mcp).",
  "mcp_status_bucket": "official",
  "api_gate_bucket": "paid",
  "mcp_urls": [
    "https://mcp.helpscout.net/mcp",
    "https://docs.helpscout.com/article/1779-connect-your-ai-agent-with-help-scout-to-search-conversations-and-pull-reports"
  ],
  "source_urls": [
    "https://docs.helpscout.com/article/1779-connect-your-ai-agent-with-help-scout-to-search-conversations-and-pull-reports",
    "https://www.helpscout.com/pricing/",
    "https://mcp.helpscout.net/mcp"
  ],
  "source_annotations": [],
  "vendor_domain": "helpscout.com",
  "display_name": "Help Scout",
  "docs_url": null,
  "jobs": [],
  "jobs_tagged_by": null,
  "jobs_tagged_on": null,
  "github_url": null,
  "github_stars": null,
  "github_last_commit": null,
  "github_archived": null,
  "github_fetched_on": null,
  "github_candidates": [],
  "docs_digest": null,
  "docs_last_crawled": null,
  "submission": null,
  "mcp_tools": [],
  "mcp_tool_count": 0,
  "mcp_tools_evidence": null,
  "mcp_tools_repo": null,
  "mcp_tools_repo_party": null,
  "mcp_catalog_shape": null,
  "mcp_catalog_note": null,
  "mcp_tools_fetched_on": null,
  "cli_status": "none-found",
  "cli_party": null,
  "cli_binary": null,
  "cli_install": [],
  "cli_login": null,
  "cli_commands_seen": [],
  "cli_docs_url": null,
  "cli_repo": null,
  "cli_packages": [],
  "cli_evidence": null,
  "cli_checked_on": "2026-09-27",
  "github_org": "helpscout",
  "github_org_status": "resolved",
  "github_org_url": "https://github.com/helpscout",
  "github_org_evidence": {
    "rule": "rule 3",
    "url": "search q=Help Scout",
    "matched_domain": "helpscout.com",
    "via": "website",
    "detail": "account website https://developer.helpscout.com has the vendor's domain",
    "confidence": "strong",
    "candidates_rejected": []
  },
  "github_org_repos": 132,
  "github_org_repos_mcp": 0,
  "github_org_repos_cli": 4,
  "github_org_latest_activity": "2026-08-03T13:06:25Z",
  "github_org_recent_repos": [
    {
      "name": "app-template",
      "url": "https://github.com/helpscout/app-template",
      "kind": "docs-or-examples",
      "description": "Help Scout Developer Platform App Template",
      "stars": 14,
      "pushed_at": "2026-08-03",
      "latest_release": null
    },
    {
      "name": "helpscout-api-php-laravel",
      "url": "https://github.com/helpscout/helpscout-api-php-laravel",
      "kind": "api-client",
      "description": "Service Provider and Facade for using the Help Scout API with Laravel and Lumen applications.",
      "stars": 9,
      "pushed_at": "2026-07-24",
      "latest_release": "2.1.4"
    },
    {
      "name": "fe-yam-site",
      "url": "https://github.com/helpscout/fe-yam-site",
      "kind": "app",
      "description": "🥔 Front-end Engineering: Hiring Project (Design Team)",
      "stars": 0,
      "pushed_at": "2026-06-23",
      "latest_release": null
    },
    {
      "name": "helpscout-api-php",
      "url": "https://github.com/helpscout/helpscout-api-php",
      "kind": "sdk",
      "description": "PHP Wrapper for the Help Scout API",
      "stars": 102,
      "pushed_at": "2026-06-15",
      "latest_release": "3.10.3"
    },
    {
      "name": "beacon-ios-sdk",
      "url": "https://github.com/helpscout/beacon-ios-sdk",
      "kind": "sdk",
      "description": "The Beacon iOS SDK",
      "stars": 23,
      "pushed_at": "2026-04-27",
      "latest_release": "4.1.0"
    }
  ],
  "github_org_checked_on": "2026-09-08",
  "mcp_endpoint": null,
  "mcp_docs_url": null,
  "endpoint_status": "not-probed",
  "endpoint_http_status": null,
  "endpoint_last_probed": null,
  "endpoint_wall_note": null,
  "canonical": true,
  "canonical_id": "14-help-scout",
  "also_listed_in": [],
  "source_file": "14-inbound-plg-chat.md",
  "source_line": 313,
  "file_index": 16,
  "category_num": "14",
  "category_slug": "inbound-plg-chat",
  "category_label": "Inbound & PLG Chat",
  "heading": "Help Scout",
  "missing_schema_fields": [],
  "extra_fields": {},
  "display_rank": 94
}