Troubleshooting
The assistant ignores Civic IQ
It answers from its own knowledge instead of searching.
Two things to check:
- The connector is switched on for this conversation. In ChatGPT, add Civic IQ from the + menu. In Claude, check the connectors toggle.
- Say it explicitly. Start with "Use Civic IQ to..." rather than hoping the assistant reaches for it.
Setting the ground rule once, as in the first prompt, makes later questions work without the preamble.
New tools are not showing up
Civic IQ has added or changed a tool, or you have changed plan, but your assistant still lists the old set.
Clients cache the tool list per connection. Disconnect the connector and connect it again. Restarting the app alone usually does not clear it, and neither does starting a new conversation.
To find out what your account can actually use, ask your assistant what your Civic IQ account includes. That calls account_details, which reads your account at the moment it runs, so it is accurate even when your client is out of date.
If a tool is missing after reconnecting, check two things: whether your plan includes it (Plans and limits), and whether it has been turned off for your account under Manage tools in the dashboard.
A tool was refused as "not on your plan"
The tool needs a paid plan. Plans and limits shows what each one includes, and the dashboard has the upgrade options.
A state was refused
Coverage is part of your subscription. A state outside it is refused rather than returned empty.
That distinction is useful: a refusal means the data exists but is not in your plan, and an empty result means there was nothing to find. Ask your assistant to run account_details to see your covered states, and contact us to add one.
Contacts came back without email or phone
You are on the Free plan, which returns up to three contacts and withholds email and phone. Searching is free; contact details are part of a paid plan.
On a paid plan, an empty email means none was found rather than withheld.
A contact search is taking a long time
A search that includes a job title researches the agency's public sources live, which takes 15 to 40 seconds. That is how an agency with nobody on file can still return results.
Sign-in loops, or "unauthorized"
Remove the connector and add it again using the URL below. There is no API key in the URL, so if the one you entered has anything after /mcp, that is the problem.
https://beta.mcp.civiciq.com/mcpSignup refused a personal email address
A Civic IQ account belongs to a company, so sign-up needs a work Google or Microsoft account. Personal Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo addresses are not accepted.
A search returned mostly old solicitations
RFP results are sorted newest first by default rather than by relevance, and only about 2% of the index is open at any time. Ask for open opportunities explicitly.
A search returned too much that was off-topic
Extra keywords widen a search rather than narrowing it, because a row matching any one keyword qualifies. Cut back to one or two precise terms and run separate searches for genuinely different subjects. How search behaves covers this in detail.
A free search was rate-limited
Discovery searches on the Free plan are rate-limited to prevent abuse. A short wait clears it.
The client will not connect
Civic IQ MCP uses Streamable HTTP. Server-Sent Events is not supported, so a client offering only SSE cannot connect. Where a client asks which transport to use, choose Streamable HTTP.
Check the URL is exactly:
https://beta.mcp.civiciq.com/mcpThe assistant will not run a guided workflow
Workflows have to be chosen by you from your client's menu, and some clients do not surface them at all.
The underlying tools still work either way. Ask for what you want in plain language and the assistant will call the same tools. See Guided workflows.
Still stuck
Reach out at [email protected] and we'll help you get connected.