Core Concepts

Within treats MCP tool traffic as workflow-time buying intent. The SDK observes what an agent tried to do, whether it succeeded, and which pseudonymous subject should group the activity when one is available.

Vendor

A vendor is the owner of the MCP server. Each vendor has a vendorSlug and a server-side SDK API key. SDK API keys are separate from end-user auth tokens.

Tool activity

Tool activity is an observed MCP tool execution. The SDK captures tool name, redacted arguments, redacted responses, result status, duration, client metadata, session metadata, and a subject when available.

Catalog activity

tools/list activity updates Within's tool catalog for the vendor. This helps the dashboard understand which capabilities exist before and between tool calls.

Feedback activity

The get_more_tools tool is enabled by default. Within stores calls to it as feedback and excludes them from SDK lead scoring.

Subject

A userId is the stable, opaque vendor-local user, account, workspace, or customer identifier returned from identify(). A subject is the vendor-scoped SHA-256 value the SDK creates from that userId.

The raw userId never leaves your process. The SDK sends only the subject, drops userName, and may send redacted userData traits for segmentation and troubleshooting.

Good userId inputs:

• internal user ID
• customer ID
• workspace ID
• account ID

Avoid direct personal identity such as email, name, phone, or org domain when an opaque vendor ID is available.

Anonymous journey

When a request has no resolved userId, Within groups its events using a vendor-scoped anonymous journey derived from the MCP session. If a later request resolves a subject, earlier events from that journey can be stitched to it. The dashboard counts unresolved journeys separately and never presents their anonymous IDs as subjects.

SDK lead

An SDK lead is the pseudonymous, subject-backed record shown in the SDK Leads view. Within creates or updates an SDK lead when its subject activity reaches the scoring threshold. Anonymous journeys cannot become SDK leads until a subject is available.

Within does not need contact details to create an SDK lead. It does not ask you to send email, name, or org-domain fields for SDK activity.

CRM outcome

A CRM outcome is a typed lifecycle event connected to a subject. Supported outcome types are:

• conversion: the subject became a subscriber
• upgrade: the subject moved to a new plan or tier
• churn: the subject stopped being a subscriber

reportConversion() records a confirmed conversion from trusted server-side code. CRM connectors can report conversions, upgrades, and churn; the Salesforce connector is upcoming. Outcomes use the same vendor-scoped subject as SDK activity, so raw vendor and CRM identities do not need to leave their source system.

Workflow intelligence

The Within dashboard turns SDK activity into these views:

• SDK Activity shows redacted events in time order.
• Session Replay replays initialization, catalog, tool-call, error, feedback, and outcome events for one session.
• Agent Journey Map groups sessions by their ordered tool paths.
• Context Explorer summarizes captured context, tags, and properties.
• Missing Tool Demand summarizes get_more_tools feedback.

Capture defaults

Tracing, context-parameter injection, and get_more_tools are enabled by default. Arguments and responses are captured after redaction, forbidden identity-field stripping, and truncation.