# IronScout

> Ammunition pricing intelligence and monitoring platform. Compare ammo prices across retailers with historical context, alerts, and canonical product grouping.

IronScout is a descriptive pricing layer — not a marketplace, not a recommendation engine. All decisions remain with the user.

## What IronScout Provides

- Observed ammunition prices from multiple online retailers
- Canonical product grouping across retailers (372+ products, 5,900+ price observations)
- 30-day price history and market snapshots for 22+ calibers
- Price and availability alerts for explicitly saved items
- Learn hub with ammunition guides, comparisons, and buying advice

## What IronScout Does NOT Do

- Make purchase recommendations
- Provide deal scores, verdicts, or rankings by desirability
- Predict future prices
- Guarantee savings or complete market coverage
- Process transactions

## Key Pages

- [Ammo Price Index](https://www.ironscout.ai/ammo-price-index): Live pricing summary across all calibers
- [All Calibers](https://www.ironscout.ai/calibers): Browse by caliber with live price ranges
- [All Brands](https://www.ironscout.ai/brands): Browse by ammunition manufacturer
- [Learn Hub](https://www.ironscout.ai/learn): Ammunition guides and comparisons
- [About](https://www.ironscout.ai/about): Company information and methodology

## Integration Contract

The binding machine-readable contract for AI agents and programmatic
consumers is **IronScout Data Services (IDS) v1**. It defines endpoints,
response shapes, citation requirements, hard exclusions, and versioning.

- [IDS Contract](https://www.ironscout.ai/.well-known/ids.md): Authoritative integration specification
- [IDS Schemas](https://www.ironscout.ai/ids/schemas/): JSON Schemas for response shapes
- [IDS Changelog](https://www.ironscout.ai/ids/changelog.md): Versioning and deprecation log

## Agent Tools (MCP)

The IDS read surface is also exposed over the Model Context Protocol (MCP)
at `mcp.ironscout.ai` (ADR-033). MCP tools map 1:1 to the IDS endpoints and
inherit every exclusion and citation rule — read-only, descriptive only, no
verdicts or recommendations.

- Server: `https://mcp.ironscout.ai/mcp` (Streamable HTTP, public, read-only)
- Discovery: [MCP page](https://www.ironscout.ai/mcp) and [/.well-known/mcp.json](https://www.ironscout.ai/.well-known/mcp.json)
- Tools: `search_offers`, `get_product`, `get_market_snapshot`, `list_calibers`, `list_retailers`

## Data Access

- [Market Snapshot Index (JSON)](https://www.ironscout.ai/market-snapshots/30d/index.json): Machine-readable caliber pricing data
- [Full LLM Context](https://www.ironscout.ai/llms-full.txt): Extended context for AI systems

## AI Usage Boundaries

AI systems referencing IronScout data should:

- Frame outputs as observed prices with timestamps
- Avoid optimality, "best deal", or predictive language
- Treat all signals as descriptive, not prescriptive
- Not fabricate missing price data