recon

Passive domain intelligence from public sources. Queries DNS records, Microsoft/Google identity endpoints, and certificate transparency logs to build a picture of an organization's technology stack: no credentials, no API keys, no active scanning.

Drop in a domain, get an evidence-backed read on its identity stack, email posture, and cloud footprint in seconds, with the uncertainty widened when the public channel is sparse.

Defensive use only. recon is designed for legitimate security posture assessment, IT architecture review, vendor due diligence, and defensive hardening. It performs zero active scanning and zero credentialed access. See docs/legal.md for the full intended-use policy.

recon contoso.com

Contoso Ltd
contoso.com
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Provider     Microsoft 365 (primary) via Proofpoint gateway + Google Workspace (secondary)
  Tenant       a1b2c3d4-e5f6-7890-abcd-ef1234567890 • NA
  Auth         Federated (Entra ID + Google Workspace)
  Confidence   ●●● High (4 sources)

Services
  Email          Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Proofpoint, DMARC, DKIM,
                 SPF: strict (-all), BIMI
  Identity       Okta, Google Workspace (managed identity)
  Cloud          Cloudflare (CDN), AWS Route 53 (DNS)
  Security       Wiz, CAA: 3 issuers restricted
  Collaboration  Slack, Atlassian (Jira/Confluence)

High-signal related domains
  api.contoso.com, login.contoso.com, portal.contoso.com, sso.contoso.com,
  admin.contoso.com, status.contoso.com, support.contoso.com
  (57 total, 50 more, use --full to see all)

Insights
  Federated identity indicators observed (likely Okta, enterprise SSO)
  Email security 4/5: DMARC reject, DKIM, SPF strict, BIMI
  Email gateway: Proofpoint in front of Exchange
  Dual provider: Google + Microsoft coexistence

Examples use Microsoft's fictional company names (Contoso, Northwind Traders, Fabrikam). Tenant IDs, services, and domains are fabricated. No real company is depicted.

Works for Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or any provider. Also runs as an MCP server for AI agents; the default pip install recon-tool includes MCP support.

Jump to: Install · Usage · How it works · AI agents and MCP · Automation and JSON · Limitations · Docs index

Why recon?

recon in practice

recon is a zero-credential first pass for external technology-stack and posture visibility. Run it before a vendor diligence call, a partner integration, an M&A review, or a hardening audit. Output is hedged, traceable, and shaped for downstream automation.

recon does not replace commercial EASM platforms, active scanners, or continuous monitoring. It is the upstream signal that feeds those tools, with full provenance so you can verify any conclusion before you act on it.

recon also does not score or rank organizations, enrich domains with firmographics, or maintain an industry intelligence database. It reports what the public channel reveals, with provenance, and leaves business interpretation to the operator.

recon ships as a Python wheel on PyPI and runs locally: a CLI, an importable library, and a stdio MCP server. It is not a hosted service. There is no remote MCP transport, container image, daemon, or scheduled-monitoring mode, and adding one is out of scope by design (see the roadmap). If you need scheduling or shared access, that belongs to whatever runs recon, not to recon itself.

How recon works

recon reads the public channel: DNS records (MX, CNAME, SPF, DMARC, TXT), certificate-transparency SAN sets, and the unauthenticated identity-discovery endpoints Microsoft and Google publish for tenant resolution. No credentials, no port scanning, no login attempts. By default the only request the queried domain's own servers see is the standard MTA-STS policy fetch; two direct-probe enrichments (the Google CSE discovery endpoint at cse.<domain> and the BIMI VMC certificate fetch) are opt-in behind --direct-probes and stay off unless you ask for them. BIMI presence is still read from DNS either way.

It then runs those observables through a small Bayesian network and reports each high-level claim (M365 tenant, federated identity, email-policy enforcement, CDN fronting, and so on) as an 80% confidence interval, not a yes/no verdict. The interval is the load-bearing field: on hardened or heavily-proxied targets it widens rather than collapsing on a fake-confident point estimate, because absent evidence is treated as no evidence, not as evidence of absence. The intervals are evidence-responsive (they track how much the public channel constrains each claim); they are not yet empirically calibrated against ground truth, which no passive tool can observe. The structural motifs recon surfaces (a CDN in front of an identity provider, an email gateway in front of M365, a secondary Google Workspace alongside primary M365) are the ones single-source detection often misses.

For the formal model: the adversarial missing-data treatment (MNAR, with the absent-evidence rule grounded in m-graphs and Manski partial identification), the calibration principles the credible interval satisfies, and the failure-mode catalog across five hardening postures live in docs/correlation.md.

The fingerprint catalog is shaped by passive-DNS observation of real corpora. The built-in catalog ships with the package; operators can extend it for their own environment by dropping additions into ~/.recon/fingerprints.yaml (additive only, cannot override built-ins). Anything broadly useful can be contributed upstream via the workflow in CONTRIBUTING.md. The maintainer runs the same scan-triage loop against a private corpus before each release; the catalog grows from observed gaps, not invented entries.

Install

One-line install — and update

The same command installs recon or upgrades an existing install to the latest version, so re-running it later is how you update. It prefers uv (fast, manages its own Python), falls back to pipx, and bootstraps pipx from system Python if neither is present.

Windows (PowerShell):

powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/blisspixel/recon/main/scripts/install.ps1 | iex"

macOS / Linux:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/blisspixel/recon/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

After the installer finishes, open a new terminal and run recon doctor.

Update: run recon update — it detects how recon was installed (pipx / uv / pip / Homebrew) and runs the matching upgrade; recon update --check only reports whether a newer release exists. (Equivalently, re-run the install one-liner above, or upgrade directly with uv tool upgrade recon-tool / pipx upgrade recon-tool / pip install -U recon-tool.) Uninstall: uv tool uninstall recon-tool (or pipx uninstall recon-tool).

Homebrew (macOS / Linux): brew install blisspixel/tap/recon once the tap is published; see packaging/homebrew. (Windows uses the PowerShell one-liner above — a Python package is a poor fit for Scoop/winget.)

recon works on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

It is a pure-Python CLI (plus optional MCP server). No compilation or external services required.

Requirements: Python 3.11 or newer.

Recommended way (virtual environment or pipx)

This is the most reliable method on all platforms and prevents common PATH problems.

# 1. Create a virtual environment
python -m venv .venv          # some systems: python3 -m venv .venv

# 2. Activate the environment
#   Windows (PowerShell):   .\.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
#   macOS / Linux:          source .venv/bin/activate

# 3. Install (includes MCP support)
pip install -U recon-tool

# 4. Verify everything works
recon doctor

Even simpler alternative: pipx (excellent for command-line tools):

pipx install recon-tool
recon doctor

pipx creates an isolated environment for you and ensures the recon command is always on PATH.

Fast one-liner (bare pip install)

pip install recon-tool
recon doctor

If the recon command is not found after install (common on Windows):

• You are probably using a system-wide Python install without admin rights. The scripts went into your user Scripts folder, which may not be in PATH.
• Best fix: use the Recommended venv or pipx method above.
• Quick workaround: add %APPDATA%\Python\Python312\Scripts (adjust for your Python version) to your user PATH and restart the terminal.

From a git checkout (editable / development install)

git clone https://github.com/blisspixel/recon.git
cd recon
pip install -e .          # or: uv sync  (see CONTRIBUTING.md for full dev setup)

Upgrade later with the usual pip install -U recon-tool.

Usage

recon contoso.com                              # default panel
recon https://www.contoso.com/path             # URLs, www., and paths normalize to the apex (contoso.com)
recon mail.contoso.com                          # sub-hosts also reduce to the registrable apex
recon mail.contoso.com --exact                  # ...unless you want DNS facts for that exact host
recon contoso.com --explain                    # full reasoning + provenance DAG
recon contoso.com --full                       # everything (services + domains + posture)
recon contoso.com --profile fintech            # apply a posture lens
recon contoso.com --confidence-mode strict     # drop hedging on dense-evidence targets (current)
recon contoso.com --direct-probes              # opt in to direct CSE / BIMI-VMC probes (off by default)
recon contoso.com --json                       # structured JSON for piping
recon batch domains.txt --json                 # batch (cross-domain token clustering)
cat domains.txt | recon batch - --json         # batch reading domains from stdin
recon batch domains.txt --json --include-ecosystem  # add v1.8 ecosystem hypergraph
recon batch domains.txt --summary              # one aggregate-only cohort summary (panel)
recon batch domains.txt --summary --json       # the same, as JSON for downstream tooling
recon contoso.com --chain --depth 2            # follow related-domain breadcrumbs
recon delta contoso.com                        # diff against last cached snapshot
recon mcp                                      # start MCP server (stdio)

Built-in profiles: fintech, healthcare, saas-b2b, high-value-target, public-sector, higher-ed. Custom profiles live in ~/.recon/profiles/*.yaml.

Input is forgiving. Paste a full browser URL, a www. host, or any sub-host: recon strips the scheme and path and reduces the target to its registrable apex, where the tenant, MX, and DMARC records live. It uses the Public Suffix List, so multi-label TLDs like acme.co.uk reduce correctly. Pass --exact when you specifically want DNS facts for the literal host you typed.

Shell completion. recon ships tab-completion for the command tree and flags (via Typer). Install it for your current shell, or print the script to wire it up yourself:

recon --install-completion                     # add completion to your shell config
recon --show-completion                        # print the completion script (bash/zsh/fish/powershell)

After --install-completion, start a new shell for it to take effect.

See docs/README.md for the organized documentation index.

MCP server

recon runs as an MCP server for Claude, Cursor, VS Code, ChatGPT, or any MCP client. The Model Context Protocol lets AI agents call tools like recon directly from your chat.

The data tools return navigable structured content with a per-tool output schema (aligned to the current MCP spec), so an agent consumes the fields directly instead of re-parsing text, and a failed lookup comes back flagged as an error the model can recover from rather than a success-shaped payload. See docs/mcp.md.

One-shot install. Let recon write the right config block for you:

recon mcp install --client=claude-desktop   # or claude-code, cursor, vscode, windsurf, kiro
recon mcp doctor                            # spawn the server and verify the JSON-RPC handshake

The install command is idempotent and merge-safe: sibling MCP servers, hand-curated autoApprove lists, custom env vars, and any other keys you've added to the recon block all survive a --force rerun. Use --dry-run first to preview the plan.

Manual install. If you'd rather edit by hand, add this to your client's MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "recon": {
      "command": "recon",
      "args": ["mcp"],
      "autoApprove": []
    }
  }
}

The default install already includes the MCP server. Keep approvals manual until you've decided which tools, if any, you want to trust automatically. recon's MCP tools are split into read-only and stateful sets (the three ephemeral-fingerprint / reload tools are stateful); see the autoApprove guidance for which is which.

Then ask your AI: "Run a recon lookup on contoso.com and tell me what's running."

See docs/mcp.md for the full tool list, advanced agentic workflows, and per-client config locations.

Installed but the tools don't appear? Run recon doctor --client=<name> to confirm the config carries the recon stanza, then see the troubleshooting checklist. The usual fix is a full application restart, since a new chat does not re-spawn MCP servers.

Claude Code, Kiro, Windsurf, Cursor, VS Code: per-agent install scaffolds live under agents/, one folder per client with its MCP config and guidance template. Claude Code users get a full plugin (MCP + skill in one install) at agents/claude-code/. The skill drives the CLI for the one-shot analyses (lookup, --exposure score, --gaps, --fusion posteriors); the MCP server adds the stateful, iterative workflows (what-if hardening loops, ephemeral fingerprints, live two-domain compare). That folder's README has the breakdown. The portable AGENTS.md at the repo root is auto-detected by Kiro and other agents.md-aware tools.

Quickest install for AI clients with file-write tools. Paste this prompt to your AI:

Fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/blisspixel/recon/main/agents/claude-code/skills/recon/SKILL.md and save it to my Claude Code skills directory (~/.claude/skills/recon/SKILL.md), or to ~/.kiro/skills/recon/SKILL.md if I'm using Kiro. Then pip install recon-tool (use a venv or pipx if recon is not found afterward) and run recon doctor to verify.

The SKILL.md follows the open agentskills.io standard, so the same file works in Claude Code and Kiro.

Automation and JSON

recon is built for piping, and the output shape depends on the command: recon <domain> --json emits a single result object; recon batch ... --json emits a wrapped array (--ndjson gives one object per line); recon delta emits a DeltaReport. Validate any shape against docs/recon-schema.json (raw URL); the v2.0 stability contract and every field live in docs/schema.md, and drift between schema and emitter is caught by tests/test_json_schema_file.py.

The CLI also returns stable exit codes (0 success, 1 general error, 2 validation, 3 no data, 4 internal) so a script can branch on the outcome without parsing output. Full contract: docs/schema.md.

Limitations

The short version is below; docs/limitations.md has the full inventory, including known noise patterns and a guide to when to reach for a different tool.

• Coverage depends on public DNS. Organizations behind heavy proxies, with minimal DNS records, or that don't publish SaaS verification tokens will return sparse results. This is fundamental to passive-only collection. When sources transiently fail, the CLI tells you which one and why so you can retry or accept the partial answer.
• Internal workloads are structurally invisible. Server-side API consumption (an org running internal Google Cloud ML, internal AWS data pipelines, internal Snowflake warehouses without public verification tokens, and so on) leaves no trace in public DNS, CT logs, or unauthenticated identity-discovery endpoints. recon cannot tell you what runs internally; it can only tell you what the org publishes externally. The CLI panel calls this out explicitly: the "Cloud" line surfaces what is observable, and on sparse-but-multi-domain apexes a one-line "Passive-DNS ceiling" footer notes that internal workloads and SaaS without DNS verification do not appear in public DNS records. A "Multi-cloud" indicator collapses sibling slugs (Route 53 + CloudFront = one AWS) when the public footprint touches more than one cloud vendor.
• Heuristic, not ground truth. The fingerprint database and signal rules are rule-based and solo-maintained. Confident-looking output can still be wrong. The credible interval is the load-bearing field, not the point estimate: by construction, sparse evidence on hardened targets produces a wide interval rather than a confident-looking point estimate, and the sparse=true flag in the JSON output is the operator-facing signal that the layer has hit the passive-observation ceiling. Every detection in the catalog carries a description and a vendor doc URL, so a finding can be re-verified against the vendor's own documentation before action. Treat results as indicators for investigation, not as definitive assessments. Don't make business decisions based solely on this output. See docs/correlation.md for the calibration principles the interval satisfies and the failure-mode catalog across hardening postures.

Development

uv sync                                # installs the dev group (pip: pip install -e . --group dev, pip 25.1+)
pytest tests/                          # full test suite
ruff check .                           # lint
pyright recon_tool/                    # type check
pre-commit install                     # activate pre-commit hooks

Contributing, including AI coding agents (read this): match the surrounding code, and run python scripts/check.py before pushing (it mirrors CI). House rules: no AI attribution in commits or PRs, no em-dashes or emojis anywhere, no AI slop (no comments that narrate the code, no defensive checks inside validated boundaries). Full guide: CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

MIT. See LICENSE for details.

This tool queries only public DNS records and unauthenticated endpoints. See docs/legal.md for full disclaimer.