SSL Certificate Grounding Data

Overview

An SSL certificate API for expiry monitoring and domain audits. SSL Checker works by fetching the live SSL certificate of the website provided and returning its details — issuer, subject, validity dates and key strength — along with derived checks computed from the certificate: current validity, days until expiry, an expiring-soon flag, and self-signed detection.

Live Test SSL Certificate Grounding Data Source →

The tool

Once your client is connected to the VerveContext server, this appears in its tool list as SSLCertificateGroundingData. It is read-only and open-world — it fetches and never mutates anything on your side — so most clients call it without asking you to confirm.

{
  "name": "SSLCertificateGroundingData",
  "arguments": {
    "domain": "ebay.com"
  }
}

You do not name the tool yourself; the model picks it. Asking about ebay.com in the terms this source covers is enough for it to reach for SSLCertificateGroundingData on its own — naming it explicitly also works, and is the way to force the call.

Connecting

One server URL covers every source in the catalog, including this one. Authorization is OAuth: the client opens a browser once, and there is no key to paste into a config file.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vervecontext": {
      "url": "https://api.vervecontext.com/v1/mcp"
    }
  }
}

https://api.vervecontext.com/v1/mcp

Per-client setup — Claude, Cursor, VS Code, ChatGPT — is on the MCP setup page.

Arguments

These are the properties on the tool's inputSchema, so a well-behaved client validates them before the call is made. Premium arguments are accepted on every plan but only take effect on plans that include them.

What the model gets back

The result carries a structuredContent object matching the tool's declared outputSchema, so a client reads fields without parsing prose. status is "ok" and error is null on success; a null field means the value was not available for that input, not that the call failed.

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{
  "status": "ok",
  "error": null,
  "data": {
    "subject": {
      "C": "US",
      "ST": "California",
      "O": "eBay, Inc.",
      "CN": "ebay.com"
    },
    "issuer": {
      "C": "GB",
      "O": "Sectigo Limited",
      "CN": "Sectigo Public Server Authentication CA OV R36"
    },
    "subjectaltname": "DNS:ebay.com, DNS:befr.ebay.be, DNS:benl.ebay.be, DNS:cafr.ebay.ca, DNS:e-bay.it, DNS:ebay.at, DNS:ebay.be, DNS:ebay.ca, DNS:ebay.ch, DNS:ebay.co.uk, DNS:ebay.com.au, DNS:ebay.com.hk, DNS:ebay.com.my, DNS:ebay.com.sg, DNS:ebay.de, DNS:ebay.es, DNS:ebay.fr, DNS:ebay.ie, DNS:ebay.in, DNS:ebay.it, DNS:ebay.nl, DNS:ebay.ph, DNS:ebay.pl, DNS:ebay.us, DNS:ebay.vn, DNS:wwww.ebay.co.uk, DNS:wwww.ebay.com, DNS:wwww.ebay.com.au, DNS:wwww.ebay.de, DNS:wwww.ebay.in, DNS:wwww.ebay.it",
    "infoAccess": {
      "CA Issuers - URI": [
        "http://crt.sectigo.com/SectigoPublicServerAuthenticationCAOVR36.crt"
      ],
      "OCSP - URI": [
        "http://ocsp.sectigo.com"
      ]
    },
    "ca": false,
    "bits": 2048,
    "valid_from": "Jul 28 00:00:00 2025 GMT",
    "valid_to": "Jul 28 23:59:59 2026 GMT",
    "serialNumber": "99F408949A6416EDC3B8F5EC77B2EBE5",
    "domain": "ebay.com",
    "isExpired": false,
    "isValid": true,
    "daysUntilExpiry": 20,
    "isExpiringSoon": true,
    "isSelfSigned": false
  }
}

Response fields

Paths are relative to data. Premium fields are absent rather than zeroed on plans that do not include them, so check for presence instead of comparing to 0.

Why ground on it

A model can produce something that looks like this answer from its training data, and be confidently out of date or simply wrong. This source returns the current value in a shape you can check, which is the difference between an answer you can cite and one you have to hedge.

Point an evaluation at ca: it is the field most worth pinning a claim to, and it is either present and current or absent — never plausibly invented.

Failure modes

Errors come back as tool errors carrying a sentence the model can act on, not a bare status code. Error handling covers the full list.

A call costs 10 credits each time the tool actually runs; a model that reasons about the tool without calling it costs nothing.

Use cases

Expiring Certificate Alerts

DevOps teams check domain validity dates daily to send renewal alerts before certificates expire and cause browser warnings.

Customer Domain Audits

When clients point custom hostnames to a SaaS platform, automated onboarding scripts verify validity status and key strength before activating traffic.

Weak Cipher Detection

Flag outdated configurations across corporate web properties by checking whether deployed certificates meet minimum encryption key bit lengths.

Partner Domain Verification

To prevent broken checkouts, e-commerce marketplaces inspect partner payment gateways to confirm validity windows before routing shopper transactions.

Other ways to use SSL Certificate Grounding Data

Set up SSL Certificate Grounding Data on VerveContext, or reach the same source a different way. Your VerveContext account and credits work on all of them — one key, one balance.

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