AI Marketplace Tracker·v6.3: user-scoped MCP is the settled default
A live record of HR, payroll, and accounting vendors with verified AI marketplace presence, Claude Plugin Directory, Anthropic Connectors Directory, OpenAI Business Apps, and vendor-published MCP servers. This is the canonical view of who has made the plugin distribution bet.
Last audited: 21 September 2026 (V6.3: Workable widens its MCP to the full HR lifecycle on the user-scoped model, the third user-scoped-write agent connector in four days. Workable expanded its MCP server from 57 to 94 tools (July 20), adding the full 15-tool performance-review lifecycle and candidate-profile writes across Claude and ChatGPT, with every session "scoped to the authenticated user's existing role and access." With Omni HR and BambooHR earlier in the week, user-scoped write is now the settled mid-market default, being stress-tested on the sensitive performance-review surface. The buyer-side mirror: sophisticated customers place one governed gateway in front of all agent access, so a vendor connector that dumps broad access on a shared token fails there while a cleanly user-scoped one passes through. Note: this day's headline (Intuit's QuickBooks business card and OneSource Virtual's federally chartered trust bank) is a money-rail story, not a marketplace one. Prior, V6.2: the mid-market HCM tier ships agentic platforms as a bloc, and every one leads with the boundary. In ~48 hours, Paylocity Ignite AI (GA, control plane, internal), BambooHR Bamboo AI (private beta, MCP to ChatGPT/Claude, permission-scoped/attestable) and Netchex Mesh (early access, six deskless agents accessible in ChatGPT/Claude, human-approval-gated) all launched named-agent platforms. Agentic HCM is now table stakes at the mid-market; the governance surface is the differentiator, and every payroll agent stays one step back from running the payroll. Same-day counter-signal: Morgan Stanley downgraded Workday to Underweight over gradual AI monetization. Netchex added to Live. Prior, V6.1: the write-scope governance middle path ships, from an emerging vendor. Omni HR, an APAC unified HR and payroll platform, launched a vendor-published read-write MCP connector, July 20, exposing employee data, lifecycle and time off to Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor, with every agent action scoped to the operating user's own permissions and nothing retained at the connector. It is the middle path between HiBob's write-by-default connector on a shared service-account token and the read-only tax engine that refuses to act: write capability with per-person attestation, shipped by an emerging vendor before the largest platforms. Channel 3 custom MCP, early access. Prior, V6.0: the first infrastructure-supplier MCP, and it bets read-only. Symmetry, the payroll-tax engine embedded inside Gusto, UKG and Paychex, launched an MCP server exposing tax determination and multi-state pay calculation to AI agents through a read-only interface that cannot mutate payroll runs, client data or tax rules, July 15. First customer UZIO; Channel 3 custom MCP; US and Canada only. It is the counter-pattern to the write-scope wave and the first clean answer to the accuracy problem under agentic payroll. Otherwise quiet: no other net-new HR and payroll marketplace entry in the July 10–17 window; the Anthropic Connectors Directory unchanged since isolved on June 16. Prior, V5.9: two ledger corrections. HiBob's MCP server verified live in shipped beta with read-write scope on employee records and time off, service-user auth only, live since at least Q2; and the Deel App for ChatGPT, live since April 24 with transactional scope for authenticated clients, caught as a missed launch. No net-new marketplace entry in the July 3–10 window; the Anthropic Connectors Directory held at roughly 554 connectors with no HR and payroll addition since isolved on June 16. V5.8 carried: Check Payroll MCP re-dated to its March 26 announcement and logged as payroll-infrastructure rather than a retail competitor. Prior: V5.7, 17 June 2026: a mid-market HCM incumbent enters the directory. isolved launches GA of its Connector for Claude in the Anthropic Connectors Directory and ships six named autonomous HR, payroll and benefits agents under a new "Workforce Capital Management" category at SHRM26, June 16, the first SMB and mid-market incumbent of its scale to take the Anthropic-direct path. Abacor, an accountant and advisor meeting-context platform, ships an MCP connector, June 4. V5.6 carried: Workable's 38-tool MCP, May 13; Remote's MCP, June 4; Omni HR Mino, June 8; ZipRecruiter via Claude, June 9; Lattice MCP, June 10; Workday Agent-Ready Tools, June 2.) The vendor cards below are generated from the marketplace log on every publish and reflect its current state. The event log and strategy analysis are authored and carry their own version history above.
At A Glance
Loading the current ledger…
01 · Read First
“Is Vendor X on Claude?” is not a simple yes/no question. Anthropic operates three distinct distribution channels, and vendors can be in one, two, all, or none of them. This page uses precise categories so readers can see exactly how a vendor is present.
claude.com/plugins. Work with Claude Code and Claude Cowork. Anthropic-curated via a managed GitHub repository. Plugins combine MCP servers, skills, commands, and sub-agents into one installable unit. Highest trust signal, highest vendor effort. No third-party HR/payroll vendor is currently in this directory.
claude.ai/directory. Launched July 2025. Works across all Claude products, Web, Desktop, mobile, Code, API. Anthropic reviews submissions for security and compatibility. Launch partners: Notion, Stripe, Asana, Atlassian, Intercom, Canva, Figma. As of April 2026, Gusto and Intuit QuickBooks are both live in the Connectors Directory, the first HR&P-adjacent vendors admitted.
A fourth strategic option is a named multi-year Anthropic partnership, which goes beyond directory listings to bi-directional integration (Claude inside the vendor’s product AND vendor data inside Claude) with joint engineering and co-marketing. Xero and Intuit have taken this route for SMB accounting/payroll. No pure HR vendor has a comparable partnership.
For MCP servers outside Anthropic’s curation, trust tiers matter: Official (vendor-published, vendor-maintained), Community (third-party, meets minimum quality threshold), or Managed 3P (commercial integration vendor like CData or StackOne wrapping the source API).
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Vendors with verified, shipped presence in at least one Anthropic or OpenAI distribution channel, or a published official MCP server. Each card shows where the vendor is present, what the integration exposes, and whether it’s read-only or transactional.
Employee data (14 tools), contractor data (6), payroll queries (8), company/org (5), time tracking (2), utility (2), payroll execution (3: calculate_payroll, submit_payroll, run_payroll), plus query_faq and list_payroll_blockers. OAuth2 with PKCE. Selective data access (5 categories: company, employee, contractor, payroll, time tracking).
(1) Anonymous , global hiring cost / EOR-vs-entity / take-home + employer cost across 150+ countries, no login. (2) Authenticated client , start contracts, approve requests, track onboarding, retrieve worker data (respects existing Deel permissions). (3) Authenticated worker , self-service onboarding/pay/benefits/time-off. Built on Deel’s compliance KB + "$22B+ annual payroll"; not used for model training.
Real-time FP&A queries (burn rate, vendor spend, cash position), custom client reporting, advisory workflows. Blends Digits financial data with CRM / HR / project-management data inside a single AI conversation.
balances, statements, transaction search and analysis, recipients, cards , read only. Nothing from Central (payroll) is exposed through either listing.
Contact management, chart of accounts, invoice management, payroll employee queries, timesheet operations. Full CRUD. OAuth2. Claude Desktop configuration instructions included in repo.
Read , find/view employees, time-off balances/who’s-out, view tasks. Write , create/update employee records, submit time-off requests, task management. Auth: Bob service users only (Base64 Basic-Auth token, permission-group scoped); no employee-level OAuth. Clients: Claude Desktop/Code, Cursor, VS Code, Microsoft Copilot Studio, ChatGPT.
Read + write across core HR modules , employee data, lifecycle management, time off. Agents can update employee profile data. Clients: Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor. Auth: every agent action scoped to the authenticated user’s existing Omni permissions ("no new access granted or HR data stored at the connector level"; "your access controls travel with the data. The AI doesn’t get a bigger view of your business than the person operating it"). Payroll modules not yet in MCP scope.
federal/state/local tax determination for any US address; real-time pay calc (regular, supplemental, multi-state, YTD-aware, gross-ups); benefit limits, YTD usage, jurisdiction filing rules. First platform customer using the MCP: UZIO.
Invoicing, receivables and expenses, per the directory listing. Depth beyond that is not established and no vendor-side announcement was located.
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For reference: the free generic capability layer that every Claude Cowork customer gets without a vendor partnership. The Human Resources plugin is the most directly relevant, it handles generic HR tasks without any third-party integration. This is the capability baseline that third-party HR plugins must add value above.
| Plugin | Function | Built By | Launched |
|---|---|---|---|
| Human Resources | Offer letters, onboarding plans, performance reviews, compensation analysis, policy guidance, recruiting | Anthropic | Feb 24 2026 |
| Finance | Journal entries, reconciliation, financial statements, variance analysis, month-end close, SOX compliance testing | Anthropic | Feb 24 2026 |
| Financial Analysis | Market research, competitive analysis, financial modelling, PowerPoint quality checking | Anthropic | Feb 24 2026 |
| Operations | Process documentation, vendor evaluations, change tracking, runbook creation | Anthropic | Feb 24 2026 |
| Engineering | Standup summaries, incident response coordination, deploy checklists, postmortems | Anthropic | Feb 24 2026 |
| Design | Critique frameworks, UX copy drafting, accessibility audits, user research planning | Anthropic | Feb 24 2026 |
| Brand Voice | Brand guideline enforcement, communications analysis | Tribe AI (partner) | Feb 24 2026 |
| Investment Banking | Deal workflows, comparable company analysis, pitch materials | Anthropic | Feb 24 2026 |
| Equity Research | Earnings transcript parsing, financial model updates, research note drafting | Anthropic | Feb 24 2026 |
| Private Equity | Deal sourcing, diligence, opportunity scoring | Anthropic | Feb 24 2026 |
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Enterprise platforms that have committed to agent accessibility at scale. Not direct competitors, but they set the accessibility bar every other vendor is measured against.
Dynamics 365 ERP MCP Server reached general availability in the 10.0.47 release. Exposes 650,000+ operations across Finance, Supply Chain, Human Resources, and Project Operations.
Create, read, update, and delete operations across data entities in Finance, Supply Chain, HR, and Project Operations. Form Interaction, API Action, and Data tools. The first hyperscaler-scale enterprise platform accessibility commitment and the reference bar for every other vendor’s plugin strategy.
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Vendors with documented in-product AI capabilities but no published MCP server, no Anthropic partnership, and no entry in any curated directory. These are the vendors most likely to transition to marketplace distribution next. Each row represents a market position worth watching weekly, if any of them ship a plugin or MCP, they move to the Live section above.
| Vendor | In-Product AI Capability | Community / 3P MCP | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rippling | Live data Q&A, Rippling AI across HCM modules | Multiple community servers exist (rocketsciencegg/rippling-mcp-server 2 stars; bifrost-mcp/rippling-mcp 0 stars, 18 tools across 6 domains), both below quality threshold |
Highest market visibility. AI strategy is internal-first. The April NYC roadshow may signal marketplace ambition. |
| Workday | Sana (GA worldwide, 300+ skills), Illuminate agents, Workday GO | Agent-Ready Tools, announced June 2 2026: MCP-based connectors that expose Workday HR and finance data to external agents under Workday’s own security model. Early access via Extend Professional, GA targeted for H2 2026, fed by Pipedream. Announced alongside an Agent Passport attestation scheme, with Cisco as the first named partner. | The reversal has happened. Workday, previously the clearest case of the closed camp, is opening MCP access to external agents as of June 2 2026. The shift was visible in April, when a reference MCP architecture appeared the same week the CTO departed for Anthropic; the June announcement makes it strategy. Now trending hybrid/open. Moves to the Live section above when general availability ships in H2 2026. |
| ADP | Lyric HCM AI features, multiple in-product agents | No vendor MCP verified on Claude or OpenAI channels; CData commercial wrapper only (Managed 3P). ADP Marketplace AI Agents launched March 2 2026: curated partner-built agents from Absorb, Aquera, G-P, Built, Employ, Praisidio, Salary.com, Tapcheck, MakeShift, Payactiv, and Quantum Workplace, distributed inside ADP’s own marketplace. | Largest payroll incumbent. No longer zero external distribution: since March 2 2026 ADP distributes partner-built agents, but through its own marketplace rather than the AI platforms. The first-mover window on Claude and ChatGPT channels remains open. |
| Dayforce | Dayforce AI Workspace, compliance monitoring, performance coaching, payroll anomaly detection | Via Microsoft Copilot Studio partnership, not a standalone Dayforce MCP | Hybrid case. Dayforce chose to distribute via Microsoft’s MCP ecosystem rather than publish its own. Worth watching whether this becomes a third path (ride a hyperscaler). |
| Paylocity | In-product AI assistant, AI-driven insights | CData commercial wrapper only (Managed 3P, read-only via JDBC) | Mid-market HCM. No vendor-published MCP. |
| UKG | AI features across UKG Ready and UKG Pro | None verified | Recent “workforce operating platform” rebrand could include marketplace distribution as a future roadmap item. |
| Deel | In-product AI for global payroll; Akai AI ops platform | Deel App for ChatGPT live since Apr 24 2026 (MCP-based; clients start contracts, approve requests and track onboarding in-chat). No Anthropic-channel presence. | $17.3B valuation, IPO prep. The marketplace-distribution trigger fired in April on the OpenAI channel; the open question is whether an Anthropic-channel listing follows. See event log, Jul 10. |
| BambooHR | Embedded AI assistant with citation-linked answers | Multiple community implementations (encoreshao/bamboohr-mcp, evrimalacan/mcp-bamboohr, twentytwokhz/bamboohr-mcp, iseletsk/cl-bamboohr-mcp, plus a Go version for time-off), all 0–3 stars, all below threshold |
SMB HR market leader. High community interest (8+ implementations) but no vendor-published or high-quality community server. Candidate for fastest transition if any implementation crosses the star threshold. |
| HiBob | Bob AI (mid-market HR) | See Live section, MCP server now in shipped beta with read-write scope (create/update employee records, submit time off) via Claude desktop, Cursor, Copilot Studio, VS Code | The V3 intent signal matured into a live capability: verified Jul 10 2026, live since at least Q2. Service-user-only access (no employee-level OAuth) is the governance model to watch. See event log, Jul 10. |
| Personio | In-product AI features | None verified | European mid-market HR. Watch for DACH or UK moves. |
| Employment Hero | Various AI features | Zapier-bridged MCP only (not direct vendor MCP) | APAC-first, expanding to UK. |
| Paychex | Multiple in-product AI features | Community demo server (ryanemitchell/paychex-mcp-server) not vendor-affiliated, documentation-focused, not data-access |
US SMB payroll incumbent. |
| Dayforce | Dayforce AI Workspace (rolling out 2026), compliance monitoring, performance coaching, payroll anomaly detection | Via Microsoft Copilot Studio partnership, not a standalone Dayforce MCP. CData commercial wrapper also available (Managed 3P). | Hybrid case. Dayforce chose to distribute via Microsoft’s MCP ecosystem rather than publish its own. Worth watching whether this becomes a third path (ride a hyperscaler). |
Confirmed absent from the MCP ecosystem entirely (verified 2026-04-11 via vendor search + GitHub + MCP registries): UK direct competitors (Access Group, IRIS, Zellis, Moorepay, Ciphr), construction payroll (Trayd, Miter, Lumber, Arcoro), Canadian SMB (Wagepoint, Payworks), US mid-market (Paycom), AI-native startups (Warp, Central HQ, Sira). No vendor-published MCP, no community MCP meeting threshold, no Anthropic partnership announcement. These categories will be checked on every scan, if any vendor launches, they will be added to Live or Transition Watch immediately.
Adjacent categories with MCP activity but outside HR&P core: SAP SuccessFactors (community only), PeopleSoft HCM (community Oracle-DB-backed), FactorialHR (European, community), Passgage (Turkish SMB, official but 1 star). Tracked for completeness but not shown in the matrix above.
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Open and distributed. Xero, Intuit, and Gusto. All three are accounting/payroll, not pure HR. All three moved before Q2 2026. Xero and Intuit took the highest-effort path (named Anthropic partnership plus published MCP). Gusto started with the lowest-effort path (MCP only, no named partnership) but has since been promoted to the Anthropic Connectors Directory, all three are now in Channel 2. All three are now visible in the market and generating social media attention.
Closed and fighting. Rippling, Paylocity, UKG. Building internal AI platforms with no external MCP distribution. This camp is thinning. Workday reversed course on June 2 2026 with MCP-based Agent-Ready Tools for external agents, and ADP began distributing curated partner-built agents through its own marketplace on March 2 2026. Workday’s CTO defection to Anthropic on April 9 had already shown the market’s verdict on the closed position: shares fell 6.5% to a six-year low in a single trading day.
Hybrid. Dayforce distributes AI capabilities via Microsoft Copilot Studio rather than publishing a standalone MCP server. Workday’s Agent-Ready Tools announcement on June 2 2026 points the largest HCM vendor in the same direction: external agent access over MCP, but governed by the vendor’s own security model and an Agent Passport attestation scheme. The hybrid path, marketplace reach without ceding the trust layer, now has the category’s biggest name moving toward it.
Until April 2026, the reference design for regulated vendors on AI marketplaces was simple: query layer in AI, transaction layer in vendor UI. Gusto pioneered this pattern. It was the safe, conservative blueprint that other payroll vendors were expected to follow.
Gusto itself has now abandoned it. The Claude Connectors Directory listing exposes calculate_payroll, submit_payroll, and run_payroll tools, eligible customers can execute payroll directly inside Claude. Combined with Xero’s full CRUD MCP and Intuit’s transaction-import capabilities, all three leading marketplace vendors now support write operations. The “query-only is the safe first step” thesis is no longer the industry consensus, it is last quarter’s thinking.
For any vendor still planning a read-only v1: the competitive bar has shifted. A read-only launch is still viable, but it will be perceived as behind the market rather than prudent.
Intuit’s Claude Connector reveals a second strategic shift. The 11 tools in the Connectors Directory (profit-loss-generator, benchmarking-against-industry, industry-recommendation) are completely different from the 50+ CRUD tools in their open-source GitHub MCP server. Intuit built a purpose-designed financial intelligence experience for Claude, not a generic API wrapper.
This raises the bar for marketplace distribution. Simply exposing existing API endpoints as MCP tools may no longer be competitive. The emerging pattern is: build differentiated, platform-native experiences that leverage the AI’s conversational capabilities to deliver value that the vendor’s own product UI cannot. Intuit’s benchmarking-against-industry tool, which draws on aggregate data across millions of QuickBooks businesses, is a capability that only works inside an AI context, it is a new product, not a republished API.
Twelve HR&P vendors on the transition watch list have in-product AI but no marketplace presence. None of them has a published MCP server, named Anthropic partnership, or Connectors Directory entry. The category of “first major multi-regional HR platform with a payroll compliance MCP” is currently empty. The regulatory moat is real, Anthropic’s native HR plugin handles offer letters and onboarding, but cannot replicate PAYE, CIS, auto-enrolment, multi-state tax, T4/ROE, or cross-border entity handling. Whoever ships first into this gap owns the category narrative for the next year.
The most striking single observation from this audit is who is entirely absent. Every major UK direct HR & payroll competitor has zero marketplace presence, Access Group, IRIS, Zellis, Moorepay, and Ciphr. No vendor-published MCP. No Anthropic Connectors Directory listing. No named partnership. No community MCP above the quality threshold. No public intent signal. The entire UK direct cluster is silent.
This is a category-defining competitive gap. The UK mid-market HR&P segment, worth billions in ARR, dominated by PE-backed incumbents with deep compliance engineering, and feeding the entry-accounting upgrade path, is sitting on a narrative that is currently empty. The first UK vendor to ship a PAYE + CIS + auto-enrolment + multi-jurisdictional MCP server owns the UK category narrative for at least a year. The window is measurably open right now, and none of the obvious incumbents has made a public move.
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Time-ordered record of AI marketplace events that shape the HR&P competitive landscape. Updated after every strategy scan.
calculate_payroll, submit_payroll, and run_payroll. “Eligible customers can also run payroll in Claude.” The read-only consensus for regulated vendors on AI marketplaces is now broken. Going viral on Twitter/X.
claude.ai/directory. Launch partners: Notion, Stripe, Canva, Asana, Atlassian, Intercom, Figma, Gmail, PayPal, Square. No HR/payroll vendor at launch, and none added since as of this audit.
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This page is maintained as a running log and refreshed regularly. Updates include checks of the Claude Plugin Directory, the Anthropic Connectors Directory, OpenAI’s Business Apps directory, and targeted vendor searches. New launches are added as they surface.
Community MCP threshold: a community-published server is included on this page only if it meets at least one of: (a) ≥100 GitHub stars, (b) listed on a major MCP registry (mcp.so, glama.ai, smithery.ai, mcpservers.org, modelcontextprotocol.info), or (c) documented maintenance in the last 90 days plus demonstrable usage. Commercial third-party wrappers (CData, StackOne, Knit, Composio, Unified.to) are tracked separately under “Managed 3P” status.
Intent signal (new category, added V3): a vendor-attributed public MCP repository is treated as a distinct signal type even when the code is minimal or empty. The reasoning: no one accidentally publishes a public [vendor]-public-mcp under an official GitHub organisation. Doing so requires internal approval, legal review, developer advocacy sign-off, naming priority over the community, and public commitment to maintenance. The act of publishing is a strategic commitment signal, even when the capability is still in development. HiBob’s repository is the first tracked example. Future intent signals will be called out separately from shipped-and-mature vendor MCPs.