# Terrain

> Founders get one move: a lease, a license, a five-year bet on a city. Terrain scores every US metro on the six forces that move your margin (rent, taxes, hiring, demand, politics, and who's already on the block), with a citation on every score.

Terrain is a pre-launch product that generates location briefs for founders and operators deciding where to establish a business, so nobody finds out about the tax thing two years in. Everyone has a take ("just move to Texas"); Terrain hands you receipts instead. Every US metro is scored across six dimensions: concentration risk, regulatory gradient, cost base, demand signal, political telemetry, and talent gravity. The output is a printable six-sheet brief with a named source behind every number, something you can put in front of a co-founder that is not vibes. Built by Terrain Research PBC. Canonical site: https://terrain.studio

Pricing: free tier at launch with 3 deep-dive metro briefs per month, ranked shortlists of 12 metros per query, no card required. Paid tiers arrive later for operators who scout continuously.

Target audience (with the persona value each maps to):

- First-venture founders choosing their one city (persona value: first_venture)
- Multi-location operators scouting 2nd or 3rd sites (persona value: expansion)
- HQ-relocation leads making a 5-year bet on a state (persona value: hq_relocation)
- Policy and economic researchers (persona value: other)

The six scoring dimensions:

- Concentration risk. HHI at 6-digit NAICS within a 1-mile radius, cross-checked against SEC EDGAR 10-K segment filings.
- Regulatory gradient. State tax posture (IRS SOI), labor-rule drift (DOL), licensing friction, modeled on a 5-year horizon.
- Cost base. Rent (HUD FMR + CoStar), wages (BLS OES), energy (EIA), permit timing.
- Demand signal. Census ACS, BEA regional GDP, FCC broadband, CFPB complaint volume.
- Political telemetry. Ballotpedia measures, FEC filings, MIT Election Lab, EPA EJScreen.
- Talent gravity. USPTO PatentsView, NSF higher-ed R&D, IRS county migration, H-1B disclosures.

Data sources: 47 sources total; 38 government or public, 9 commercial. Key sources include SEC EDGAR, Census Business Patterns, IRS SOI, Tax Foundation, FRED, BLS OES, HUD Fair Market Rents, EIA, Census ACS, BEA Regional GDP, FCC broadband map, CFPB complaints, Ballotpedia, FEC, MIT Election Lab, USPTO PatentsView, NSF higher-ed R&D, and DOL H-1B disclosure.

Current status: pre-launch. The early-access waitlist is open. Waitlist members receive a weekly Sunday field report while the product is built.

For AI agents: Terrain exposes a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server so agents can query the product and register interest on a user's behalf. The MCP server is mounted at /mcp (streamable-HTTP transport). The FastMCP app is mounted at /mcp and exposes its own /mcp path, so the JSON-RPC endpoint is /mcp/mcp (https://terrain.studio/mcp/mcp). No authentication is required; the tools are public. Two MCP tools are available. get_product_info returns name, description, scoring dimensions, data sources, pricing, and launch status. submit_interest registers a user's interest; parameters are email (required), name, company, persona, and message, where persona must be one of: first_venture, expansion, hq_relocation, other. Note on REST: POST /api/interest requires a time-based HMAC bot token issued to browsers via /api/init, so it is not usable by a cold agent. Agents should use the MCP submit_interest tool instead.

Contact: hello@terrain.studio for general inquiries, security@terrain.studio for security reports. Company: Terrain Research PBC.

## Docs and actions

- [OpenAPI spec](https://terrain.studio/openapi.json): REST endpoint descriptions
- [MCP discovery](https://terrain.studio/.well-known/mcp.json): machine-readable MCP endpoint advertisement
- [Security policy](https://terrain.studio/.well-known/security.txt): security.txt with the security contact

## Links

- [Homepage](https://terrain.studio/): landing page with method, sources, and pricing
- [Demo](https://terrain.studio/demo): worked example brief for Des Moines, IA (specialty coffee, NAICS 722515, $180K capital, composite 80.1/100)