aeo_check Live citation check
Run one query against an answer engine and see, sample by sample, whether your domain appears in the cited sources.
Open source · MIT licensed · MCP native
Know whether AI answer engines cite your domain.
open-aeo is an open source answer engine optimization monitor. It checks ChatGPT and Perplexity for the questions your buyers actually ask, records every citation over time, and shows you the pages winning the answers you are missing.
npx -y open-aeo install Live demo
Watch a citation check run, end to end.
This is the real check runner with sample data. Pick a query, choose your engines, and watch each answer come back cited or not.
open-aeo · run checkInteractive demo · sample data
Query
Your domain
open-aeo.dev
Engines
Press Run check to watch a citation check stream.
The toolkit
Seven tools for tracking AI search visibility.
Every capability is exposed as an MCP tool, so you call them in conversation instead of clicking through a dashboard.
aeo_report Batch reporting
Check a whole set of queries in one pass and get a citation rate per query, per engine.
aeo_history Citation history
Every check is stored, so you can see whether your AI search visibility is trending up or down over weeks.
aeo_gap_report Competitor gap analysis
Surface the queries where competitors are cited and you are not: the shortest path to more AI visibility.
aeo_analyse Page teardown
Fetch the competitor page that beat you and get a structured read on why the engine picked it.
aeo_recommend Prioritised recommendations
Turn a citation check into a ranked list of content changes, ordered by likely impact.
aeo_gap_history Gap history
Track how the competitive picture shifts, so you can tell whether a content change actually closed a gap.
How it works
From install to shipped content change.
Install the MCP server
One npx command writes the config for Claude Code or Claude Desktop and stores your Perplexity API key locally.
Ask in plain language
“Check if my domain is cited for these ten queries.” Claude calls the tools, streams progress, and writes results to your own database.
Close the gaps
Read the gap report, analyse the pages that outrank you, and ship the content changes that move citation rate.
Why open source
Enterprise AEO tooling, without the enterprise contract.
Answer engine visibility is now a real acquisition channel, and the platforms measuring it charge accordingly. open-aeo runs on your machine, against your API key, with your data in your database.
- Self hosted, so citation data never leaves your infrastructure
- Cents per report instead of a per seat subscription
- Multi sample checks, because one answer is not a measurement
- Runs locally or as a Cloudflare Worker with D1 storage
- Readable TypeScript you can fork and extend
FAQ
Answer engine optimization, briefly explained.
What is answer engine optimization (AEO)?
Answer engine optimization is the practice of making your content likely to be cited in AI generated answers. Where SEO targets ranked links, AEO targets the sources an engine names when it answers a question directly.
Which AI answer engines does open-aeo track?
Perplexity and ChatGPT search are supported today. Each check runs multiple samples per query, because answer engines are non deterministic and a single response is not a measurement.
How much does it cost to run?
open-aeo is free and open source under an MIT licence. You pay only your own answer engine API usage, which is roughly cents per report rather than an enterprise subscription.
Where is my citation data stored?
Locally, in your own SQLite database, or in your own Cloudflare D1 instance when you deploy the worker. Nothing is sent to a third party service beyond the answer engine API calls themselves.
Do I need Claude to use it?
open-aeo is built as an MCP server, so Claude Code and Claude Desktop are the primary clients. Any MCP compatible client can connect to it, and the dashboard works standalone.
Start tracking your citations today.
One command, your own API key, and the first report inside five minutes.