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FAQ

Is this allowed? Will my account get banned?

LinkedIn's Terms of Service (section 8.2) forbid automated access. This tool is for personal and research use; using it carries a real risk that LinkedIn restricts or bans your account. linkedin-cli is built to behave like a careful human — jittered delays between requests, conservative daily quotas — but it cannot make automation allowed. Use it at your own risk, ideally on a non-primary account, and never for bulk scraping or spam.

Where are my credentials stored?

Fernet-encrypted under ~/.config/mayai-cli/linkedin/ — credentials.json (the cookie blob) and key.bin (the key), both mode 0600. linkedin auth logout removes both. Full layout: AUTHENTICATION.md.

People search suddenly returns HTTP 500 / all N queryId candidates returned 500

LinkedIn rotated the queryId hash for the people-search GraphQL endpoint when it shipped a new web bundle, and the cached/fallback ids are now stale. The CLI scrapes a fresh id from LinkedIn's own rendered search page on the next session, so the fix is almost always:

linkedin auth login   # refresh cookies → next call scrapes a live queryId

If it still 500s, LinkedIn may have changed the response shape — run with --verbose and open an issue with the (redacted) body preview.

I get error: rate limited by LinkedIn (HTTP 429)

Stop. Wait several minutes — ideally longer — before trying again. Do not retry in a loop: LinkedIn extends the penalty the more you hit it while limited. This is separate from the CLI's own daily quotas (below), which are a local safety net, not LinkedIn's limit.

What are the daily quotas and how do I change them?

State lives in ~/.config/mayai-cli/linkedin/quotas.json and resets at local midnight. Defaults:

Quota Limit Counted when
connections 15/day A successful connections send POST.
messages 25/day Each messages send.
api_total 200/day Every Voyager request.

--no-throttle disables both the inter-request delay and these quota checks. It's the single fastest way to get an account flagged — only use it if you fully accept the risk.

I added linkedin-mcp to my MCP client and the tools don't show up

Three usual causes:

  1. Path: the command in the MCP client config must be the absolute path to the installed entry point. Run which linkedin-mcp and paste the result verbatim — ~ and shell aliases are not expanded.
  2. Not authenticated: the server refuses to start (exit code 2) if no cookies are stored. Run linkedin auth login first, then restart the MCP client.
  3. Server logs: linkedin-mcp writes diagnostics to stderr. In Claude Desktop, check ~/Library/Logs/Claude/mcp-server-linkedin.log. The first line tells you whether it bound to a session or which precondition failed.

Can the agent send connection requests or messages on its own?

No. The MCP write tools (linkedin_connections_send, linkedin_messages_send) refuse to act unless the caller passes confirm=True, and they support dry_run=True for validation. They're also rate-limited per session (5 actions per target per 5 minutes) on top of the daily quotas. The intent is that a human approves each real action.

messages send says my recipient "looks like a public id"

LinkedIn's messaging endpoint wants a numeric member id or a urn:li:member:N URN — not a vanity public id. Resolve it first:

linkedin --json profile get mario-rossi-9558832a   # read the member_id field
linkedin messages send <member_id> "Ciao Mario, ..."

Why are connections list rows so bare?

LinkedIn's connections endpoint does not inline profile names — each row is just connection_urn + connected_at. Resolving names would mean one extra API call per row, which we won't do implicitly (it burns the api_total quota fast). When you need the full profile, run linkedin profile get <public_id>.

SSL / certificate errors

The client uses the OS root certificate store. On macOS with a python.org build, run the bundled Install Certificates.command. On Linux, ensure the system CA bundle is present (pip install --upgrade certifi if needed). We do not disable certificate verification.