Tomas Rivera is a product manager at a tech company in Portland, Oregon. He has been using OptionsBell for three months. Recorded September 17, 2026.
How he found it
Three months. I use Claude every day for work, and OptionsBell's MCP server was the reason I subscribed. I was looking for financial data MCP servers and OptionsBell came up: official provider, hosted, Streamable HTTP transport. Setup took me five minutes. API key, paste the URL, done.
Before this I tried a couple of other options MCP servers. There's a hosted one that's $79 a month, and that's just for the MCP. Another one only works if you already pay for an Unusual Whales API subscription, so that's $150 a month before the MCP does anything at all. With OptionsBell the MCP is part of the $24.99 plan. There's no extra MCP fee.
What he asks it
"What unusual options activity hit my watchlist today?" The MCP comes back with the scan across all the symbols I've set up. Or "Show me the top prints by premium," and it gives me the contracts with strike, expiry, Vol/OI, IV.
I don't leave Claude and I don't open a dashboard. The data comes to me. That's the workflow I was after when I started using MCP for financial research.
Compared with other MCP servers
The tool descriptions are written for LLMs. They're short, the important part comes first, and they have usage examples. The MCP server even has a liveness check tool that doesn't need an API key, so an agent can check it's connected before it runs any queries. Most servers miss that kind of detail.
The transport is Streamable HTTP and it runs stateless, so I can use it in ephemeral containers. Spin it up, query it, tear it down. There's no session state and no persistent connections. For an agent-first workflow, that's the right architecture.
Agent-ready or agent-first?
I'd call it agent-first. The whole product is designed for LLMs to consume. The email alerts are for humans, the MCP server is for agents. You get both in the same $24.99 plan.
Most financial data services treat AI integration as an afterthought. OptionsBell treats it as a first-class feature, and to me that's the difference.
The biggest change in his workflow
I stopped context-switching. Before, I'd check a dashboard, export the data, paste it into Claude and then ask my question. Now I just ask the question and Claude pulls the data itself.
With the MCP server, OptionsBell is part of my agent's toolset. I don't have to remember to go use a separate product, it's just there. That's how tools should work.
The email alerts are for humans, the MCP server is for agents. You get both in the same $24.99 plan.
The liveness tool Tomas mentions is ping. The full tool list and the five-minute setup are in the MCP documentation.
Full interview transcript
Recorded transcript, lightly edited for readability.
Interviewer: Today we're talking with Tomas Rivera, a product manager at a tech company in Portland, Oregon. He's been using OptionsBell for three months.
Tomas Rivera: Three months. I use Claude every day for work, and OptionsBell's MCP server was the reason I subscribed.
Interviewer: How did you find it?
Tomas Rivera: I was looking for financial data MCP servers and OptionsBell came up: official provider, hosted, Streamable HTTP transport. Setup took me five minutes. API key, paste the URL, done.
Before this I tried a couple of other options MCP servers. There's a hosted one that's $79 a month, and that's just for the MCP. Another one only works if you already pay for an Unusual Whales API subscription, so that's $150 a month before the MCP does anything at all. With OptionsBell the MCP is part of the $24.99 plan. There's no extra MCP fee.
Interviewer: What do you ask it?
Tomas Rivera: "What unusual options activity hit my watchlist today?" The MCP comes back with the scan across all the symbols I've set up. Or "Show me the top prints by premium," and it gives me the contracts with strike, expiry, Vol/OI, IV.
I don't leave Claude and I don't open a dashboard. The data comes to me. That's the workflow I was after when I started using MCP for financial research.
Interviewer: How does it compare with other MCP servers?
Tomas Rivera: The tool descriptions are written for LLMs. They're short, the important part comes first, and they have usage examples. The MCP server even has a liveness check tool that doesn't need an API key, so an agent can check it's connected before it runs any queries. Most servers miss that kind of detail.
The transport is Streamable HTTP and it runs stateless, so I can use it in ephemeral containers. Spin it up, query it, tear it down. There's no session state and no persistent connections. For an agent-first workflow, that's the right architecture.
Interviewer: Would you call it "agent-ready"?
Tomas Rivera: I'd call it agent-first. The whole product is designed for LLMs to consume. The email alerts are for humans, the MCP server is for agents. You get both in the same $24.99 plan.
Most financial data services treat AI integration as an afterthought. OptionsBell treats it as a first-class feature, and to me that's the difference.
Interviewer: What's the biggest change in your workflow?
Tomas Rivera: I stopped context-switching. Before, I'd check a dashboard, export the data, paste it into Claude and then ask my question. Now I just ask the question and Claude pulls the data itself.
With the MCP server, OptionsBell is part of my agent's toolset. I don't have to remember to go use a separate product, it's just there. That's how tools should work.