Turn Claude into a full AI agent - MCPs are saving me 20+ hours weekly

Hey builders,

We're diving deep into something that's quietly revolutionising how people use Claude & AI more broadly.

You're here for the cutting-edge stuff, so let's jump straight into it.

Today I'm breaking down:
● MCPs (Model Context Protocol) - what they are and why they make Claude 10x better than ChatGPT
● Apify's new MCP integration - the specific one that's saving teams 20+ hours per week
● Killer use cases with real demos and setups
● All the resources so you can build this yourself

Firstly, what the really are MCPs and why do they matter?

Here's the thing most people don't realise: MCPs turn Claude into a full AI agent equipped with all the tools it needs to execute tasks.

You can now, directly within Claude, have it access any tool that has an MCP set up. Here are just some of the tools with MCPs:

• LinkedIn

• Firecrawl

• Playwright

• Slack

• Salesforce

• Hubspot

• Elevenlabs

• Perplexity

But here’s the key difference - unlike automation tools like Zapier where "if trigger happens, then action happens," MCPs let Claude decide which tools to use when you chat with it.

When you send a message to Claude with MCPs set up, it's going to decide which of the 200-300 available tools it needs to complete your request.

It can execute multi-step workflows, navigate different platforms, and handle complex tasks without you having to spell out every single step.

Think of it like giving Claude hands and eyes to actually interact with the web, not just talk about it.

We’ll deep dive more into what MCPs really are soon as many people ask this question.

Today we're focusing on Apify's MCP

While MCPs can integrate with Notion, Obsidian, Slack, YouTube, and hundreds of other tools, today we're diving deep into Apify's new MCP integration.

Apify, for those who may not know, is a (very good) web scraper.

I’m not at all sponsored by Apify, I honestly just love the MCP. It’s probably my favourite to date.

Don’t think about it like one tool. Think about it like a gateway to all these platforms:

• LinkedIn

• X

• TikTok

• Instagram

• Google Maps

• Apollo

• Amazon

• Hundreds more…

I’ve been using it to build entire market research agencies, lead generation pipelines, and competitive intelligence systems directly in Claude.

These are killer use cases I’ve been using recently:

✅ $50k/month market research agency in Claude - video

• Scrape YouTube comments, Reddit threads, competitor websites

• Generate professional market research reports with interactive dashboards

• All from a single prompt, zero manual work

✅ Automating your sales process end-to-end - video

• Extract LinkedIn profiles with advanced filtering

• Pull real-time company intelligence automatically

• Create hyper-personalised outreach campaigns at scale

• Build territory expansion plans instantly

✅ AI & Google Maps to find your next 1000 customers - video

• Automate prospect research and lead list building

• Analyse competitor strategies across all platforms

• Generate qualified lead pipelines from LinkedIn and Google Maps

• Create personalised outreach sequences automatically

Why this matters more than you think

You use to have full teams are still manually copying data between 15 different tools. Now, if you have this set up you can have one person automate entire workflows with a single Claude conversation.

This isn't just about saving time (though you'll save 20+ hours per week easily). It's about Claude becoming a full AI agent that can actually action things instead of just plan them out.

This is the exact type of leverage that creates unfair advantages.

Want to see this in action?

I've built complete systems and documented everything. Here are the demos:

🎥 YouTube Demos (all quick 5 min overviews):

1. Market Research Analysis & Dashboard

2. Sales & LinkedIn Scraping & Personalised Outreach

3. Sales & Google Maps Lead Generation

📄 LinkedIn Deep Dives:

• Market Research Agency Setup - Building a $50k/month research agency in Claude

• Business Intelligence Engine - Lead generation and content research automation

• Sales Team Transformation - How MCPs are changing sales and marketing operations

• Sales Rep Research Power - Giving every sales rep analyst-level research capabilities

Ready to join the builders figuring this out?

If you want to dive deeper into AI agents, automations, and systems like this, come hang with us in Ghost Community.

We’ve had over 150 people apply to our community and we’ve accepted the first batch! 🎉 

These are top founders, executive & AI enthusiasts across all sectors who want to build AI into their businesses and get ahead.

Insane to see such talent density in one place. It’s where people are sharing AI workflow automations, troubleshooting MCP setups, and pushing the boundaries of what's possible with Claude.

We’d love to see you in there. If you want to join us, you can apply below:

→ APPLY TO JOIN GHOST COMMUNITY (FREE)

I hope you found this useful! I’ll be sharing lots more systems like this weekly.

Feel free to drop me a reply with feedback or ideas of topics you’d like to see.
I read every reply!

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Happy building

Elliot

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