9. GoDaddy MCP: what the recordings showed

• Status: accepted (terms review pending)
• Date: 2026-09-30

Context

CLAUDE.md says not to guess GoDaddy's tool names or schemas: record them, and build the mapping from the recordings. The recordings are in fixtures/godaddy/, captured on 2026-09-30 from https://api.godaddy.com/v1/domains/mcp (server godaddy-domains-mcp 1.29.1).

Findings

• Tools. Two: domains_check_availability (input domains, a comma-separated string) and domains_suggest (input query, limit). Both are annotated readOnlyHint: true, destructiveHint: false. Neither declares an output schema. Their descriptions tell the model to always show GoDaddy registration links, which Titlesearch doesn't pass on: only mapped fields leave the provider.
• Transport. Stateless: no mcp-session-id. Responses are text/event-stream with a Content-Length, so they're finite. notifications/initialized returns 202. Responses carry ratelimit-limit: 3000, ratelimit-remaining, and ratelimit-reset headers, and Akamai bot-management cookies, which could affect automated clients in future.
• No prices. priceInfo and currency are null in every response recorded. GoDaddy results never include a price.
• Bulk results hide premium names. With two or more domains, each domainGroups[] entry has searchedDomain and a boolean available, but no inventory type. In one recording, three of six names were Premium according to GoDaddy's own text summary, yet all were plain available: true in the structured result. Mapping bulk results would report premium names as standard, breaking invariant 4.
• Single-domain results are explicit. A top-level isAvailable boolean, and, when available, an exact-match entry (isExactMatch: true) with inventoryType and purchasable. A registered domain has no exact-match entry, only suggestions. Inventory types seen: Standard, Premium, Registry Premium, and Auction (in suggestions).
• "Premium" can be aftermarket. bank.app came back Premium, available and purchasable, while Google Registry's RDAP says it's registered: a resale listing. shoes.online was Registry Premium, and RDAP says not found.

Decision

• Only domains_check_availability is allowlisted. domains_suggest isn't needed.
• One domain per tool call, always, so every answer uses the single-domain shape. Concurrency is 4 per provider, with a rate limit of 5 per second.
• Mapping (godaddy-check-availability-v1):
  • isAvailable: false → registered, unless an exact match says available, which is an error.
  • isAvailable: true requires exactly one available, purchasable exact match. Then Standard → available, Registry Premium or Premium → premium, and Auction → registered.
  • Anything else, including a failed schema check, isError, a bulk-shaped result, or an unknown inventory type, → error.
• Plain Premium maps to premium without special casing. When it's an aftermarket listing, RDAP says registered, and reconciliation reports unconfirmed (registry_taken_registrar_free), with both sources shown. A test covers exactly this with the recorded bank.app responses.
• The nightly contract-canary workflow calls the live endpoint with fixed domains and opens an issue on drift.

Open: terms of use

GoDaddy's MCP documentation says users must agree to GoDaddy's Universal Terms of Service and API Terms of Use, and that excessive requests may be throttled. It doesn't address self-hosted services calling the public endpoint on behalf of their own users. The API Terms of Use page returns 403 to automated fetches, so its full text wasn't reviewed. The excerpts seen permit use "through Automated Tools" to build integrations, but they bind the holder of an API credential, and the public MCP endpoint uses none.

A person needs to read the API Terms of Use before GoDaddy ships as the default registrar source for deployed instances. Until then it stays the default in code, which the brief specifies, with this ADR as the flag.

Addendum, 2026-09-30: availability only

The updated brief makes GoDaddy an availability source only: "premium" now means a price source reported a registry premium price, and prices come only from Porkbun and Name.com. The mapping changed accordingly. Standard, Registry Premium, and Premium all map to available. Auction still maps to registered. Unknown inventory types are still errors. The aftermarket case (bank.app) is unaffected: RDAP says registered, so the result is unconfirmed.