Discovery files

Private Clubs publishes a few files at fixed addresses on https://www.theprivateclubs.com. AI apps, agents and crawlers read them to find the Private Clubs MCP server and API without help.

Files

File	What it holds
`/mcp.json`	The MCP server card: the name Private Clubs, version, logo, endpoint, transport, the five tools, the server key `private-clubs`, `auth` set to `none`, and the setup page.
`/openapi.json`	The REST API spec. See API overview.
`/llms.txt`	A site overview for AI tools, regenerated hourly. It notes that the API and the MCP tools take a full state name or a two-letter code, such as `Florida` or `FL`.
`/ai/context.md`	A short Markdown summary of Private Clubs for AI tools: club counts, how fees are shown, waitlist shares and key URLs, with `/api/v1/clubs` as the club data API. It carries no fee figures.
`/mcp/setup.md`	Setup steps an agent reads and follows for its own app.
`/robots.txt`	Crawler rules, open to AI crawlers.
`/data/license`	The data license, a web page: non-commercial use with attribution to Private Clubs, AI training with citation, the attribution formats, and support@theprivateclubs.com for commercial use.

/mcp.json, /llms.txt, /ai/context.md and /mcp/setup.md are served with Cache-Control: public, max-age=3600, so a cached copy can be up to an hour old.

For AI crawlers

robots.txt opens the site to search, AI input and AI training. Its catch-all group carries this line:

Content-Signal: search=yes, ai-input=yes, ai-train=yes

That group allows / and disallows a short list of private paths, including sign-in, account, dashboard, admin and /api/. Named AI crawlers each get their own Allow: / group. They include OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, GPTBot, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, Google-Extended, Meta-WebIndexer, Amazonbot and Applebot-Extended.

Which file to use

Connect an AI app: point it at /mcp/setup.md, or follow Install Private Clubs.
Find the MCP server from code: read /mcp.json.
Build on the REST API: read /openapi.json.
Give an AI tool a site overview: use /llms.txt, or /ai/context.md for a shorter summary.
Check crawler rules: read /robots.txt.
Check the terms of use: read /data/license.

Next: Conventions and API overview.

API

Data reference

API endpoints

Files

For AI crawlers

Which file to use

​Files

​For AI crawlers

​Which file to use

Files

For AI crawlers

Which file to use