Quickstart

From zero to your first governance tool call in about five minutes — on the free tier, no credit card. Get a key, point your MCP client at OntoRamp, and run a free tool. For per-client setup (Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, and more), see Connect.

1 · Get a free API key

Register a key on the MCP page. The free tier includes a generous monthly allowance and needs no credit card. Your key is shown once on-screen and emailed to you — copy it somewhere safe.

2 · Add OntoRamp to your MCP client

Add this server to your client's MCP config and replace YOUR_API_KEY with the key from step 1. One server exposes every OntoRamp tool over the MCP Streamable HTTP transport.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ontoramp": {
      "url": "https://mcp.ontoramp.com/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"
      }
    }
  }
}

3 · Make your first call

Ask your client to run semantic_search — a free tool — for a topic like “SOC 2 readiness”. In most clients you can just ask in plain language; the underlying MCP call is:

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 1,
  "method": "tools/call",
  "params": {
    "name": "semantic_search",
    "arguments": { "query": "SOC 2 readiness" }
  }
}

4 · Read the result

You'll get back governance knowledge chunks ranked by relevance, each with its source — proof your key, connection, and first tool all work:

{
  "results": [
    {
      "chunk_id": "…",
      "content": "SOC 2 readiness maps each Trust Services Criterion to control evidence …",
      "similarity": 0.87,
      "domain": "governance",
      "document_title": "…"
    }
  ],
  "total": 10
}

Free-tier queries return results from the client-safe tier of the knowledge base.

What's free

Every tool in the MCP API reference is marked Free or Paid, so you always know what your key unlocks. The free tier covers search, maturity-gap analysis, and reading assessment results; paid tiers add write tools such as running your own governance projection.