Verticals

A vertical is a curated bundle of packs for a domain. They exist for two reasons: discoverability (one URL = “everything an agent doing housing research needs”) and packaging (some verticals include paid data sources you can subscribe to as a unit).

You don’t have to use verticals — the default gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp exposes everything. But scoping by vertical keeps context low and the agent focused.

Active verticals

Thirteen, listed by slug. Every one was POSTed against gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp?vertical=<slug> on 2026-08-14 (a real tools/list JSON-RPC call — a GET proves nothing on an MCP endpoint) and the columns below are what actually came back, not what was originally scoped.

Two different numbers a reader could mean, so both are here. Pack tools is the size of the curated bundle. On connect is what tools/list returns when you attach — the bundle plus the 31 always-on meta-tools (ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, remember, validate_claim, …) the gateway adds to every connection regardless of scope. The gap between the two columns is exactly that meta set, identically on every row, so you can re-derive either column from the other. Neither is comparable to a pack’s own tool count.

Every vertical that has its own named -intel pack now exposes that pack in full — that was not true before 2026-08-11, when five verticals mounted only part of theirs (or none). See compound tools.

What a vertical leaves out

A vertical is a curated surface, not everything adjacent to a topic. When a source you expected isn’t in the live tools/list, it is almost always still in Pipeworx — connect to the full gateway, or find it with discover_tools({task: "..."}) / ask_pipeworx.

Some omissions are deliberate rather than pending. pharma excludes the WHO and CDC packs because they carry population-health indicators (epidemiology) rather than drug development; they stay in the catalog and would belong to a global-health vertical if we build one. The FEMA, Federal Register, IMF, AirNow and Comtrade gaps flagged above are the other kind — reasonable additions nobody has made yet. If one of them is blocking you, say so with pipeworx_feedback({type: "feature", message: "..."}); that signal is what moves a pack into a bundle.

How to use one

Append ?vertical=<slug> to the gateway URL:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx-housing": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp?vertical=housing"
    }
  }
}

Or scope by task instead, which uses semantic search instead of a curated list:

https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp?task=mortgage+rates

?vertical= is hand-curated; ?task= is on-the-fly semantic. Use the vertical when you know the domain; use ?task= when you don’t.

Pack vs. vertical vs. compound tool

These three layers compose:

• Pack = one data source’s tools (fred pack = FRED-specific tools)
• Compound tool = one tool that fans out to several upstream calls (housing_market_snapshot = FRED + BLS + Zillow in one call — see compound tools for what each one actually wraps, which isn’t always what its name implies)
• Vertical = a bundle of packs + (usually) compound tools for a domain (housing vertical = altos + attom + bls + census + fred + google-sheets + housing-intel + hud, live-verified at 49 pack tools, 80 on connect)

A typical agent flow at the housing vertical:

1. Connect: ?vertical=housing → the tools/list response tells you the live count (80 as of this review; verticals vary — gtm is 333 and pharma 257, the other eleven are 41–101)
2. For a snapshot: call housing_market_snapshot (1 compound call)
3. For drilldowns: call individual tools as needed (fred_get_series, attom_property_detail, etc.)

Multiple verticals

You can mount multiple in the same client:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx-housing":  { "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp?vertical=housing" },
    "pipeworx-fintech":  { "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp?vertical=fintech" }
  }
}

Each connection is independent — separate tool list, separate session memory.

Custom vertical

If your use case spans multiple verticals or has non-standard packs, build a custom one at pipeworx.io/account. You pick which packs to include and get a signed URL.