How to Find Work Emails (in Cursor)

TL;DR

• You connect LeadOcean to Cursor once with one mcp.json entry. Then you ask for verified work emails in plain English.
• It takes about 15 minutes the first time and about 5 after that.
• A full run for 5 people spends 8 LeadOcean records: 5 for the search, 3 for revealing the emails you pick. Sizing the list is free.

Prerequisites

• A LeadOcean account. Start free: no card, 1,000 records one-off, work email required.
• Cursor installed. The Cursor MCP docs, October 2026, say Cursor reads servers from mcp.json and supports OAuth for remote servers.
• Optional, for Step 5: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY in your shell, plus curl.

export LEADOCEAN_API_KEY="paste-your-key-here"

You paste no API key into Cursor. The MCP server uses OAuth sign-in. On an Enterprise plan, an admin can limit remote servers by URL pattern in the MCP Allowlist, so ask them to approve https://api.leadocean.io/mcp if Cursor refuses the entry.

Step 1: Connect LeadOcean to Cursor

Add one url entry to mcp.json. Use ~/.cursor/mcp.json for every project, or .cursor/mcp.json inside one project.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "leadocean": {
      "url": "https://api.leadocean.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Save the file, open the MCP list in Cursor and start the sign-in for leadocean. Your browser opens on LeadOcean. Approve and return to Cursor. The server exposes 13 tools, and seven of them are free.

The full walkthrough is on Connect LeadOcean to Cursor. The OAuth server supports dynamic client registration, so you add no client ID.

Step 2: Size the list of work emails first

Ask for a count before you pull anyone. Counting costs 0 records, so you can tune the filters as often as you like. Open Cursor chat and send:

Use the leadocean MCP server only. How many VPs in Sales & Business
Development in the UK have a verified work email? Count only. Do not
pull anyone.

Cursor asks for approval before it runs an MCP tool. Click the arrow next to the tool name to see the arguments. Expect a call to leadocean_count_leads like this:

{
  "jobLevel": ["VP"],
  "jobFunction": ["Sales & Business Development"],
  "country": ["GB"],
  "emailType": ["work"],
  "emailStatus": ["verified"],
  "facets": false
}

emailType set to work keeps only addresses at the person's current employer. emailStatus set to verified keeps addresses our verifier tested. In a count or a search, verified is an upper bound: the enriched answer per address is the correct one. The values are exact strings. If the model guesses one, tell it to call leadocean_list_enum_values first.

Step 3: Pull five people

Now ask for a small batch. Keep the limit low while you check the output.

Call leadocean_search_leads with the same filters and limit 5.
Show title, company and whether an email is on file. Do not reveal
any emails yet. Tell me how many records this spent.

The tool call looks like this:

{
  "jobLevel": ["VP"],
  "jobFunction": ["Sales & Business Development"],
  "country": ["GB"],
  "emailType": ["work"],
  "emailStatus": ["verified"],
  "limit": 5
}

This spends 5 records, one per person returned. Search shows flags such as has_email, not the address itself. Each row carries a person_id, which you use in the next step.

Step 4: Reveal the emails for the people you pick

Enrich by person_id with reveal_email set to true. Ask Cursor to reveal only the people you want, not all five.

Reveal the work email for the first three people from that list with
leadocean_get_lead, using their person_id and reveal_email true. For
each, show the address, its type and its status. Say how many records
this call spent.

Each reveal costs 1 record, so three people cost 3. There is no extra charge for the email itself. A person we hold nothing for is a miss, and a miss costs nothing.

The same record also carries the person's career history when we hold it: past roles, education and certifications. Use it to check that the person still holds the title you searched for.

Read status before you send anything. We do not refund bounced emails. Treat catch_all as a risk you choose to take.

Step 5: Run the same lookup from a script

Cursor calls the same API you can call yourself. Use this when you want results in a file, or when you have a LinkedIn URL and no search row. The search is a flat JSON body, and filters are arrays.

curl -s -X POST https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/search \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"jobLevel": ["VP"], "jobFunction": ["Sales & Business Development"], "country": ["GB"], "emailType": ["work"], "emailStatus": ["verified"], "limit": 5}'

The dedicated work email endpoint returns one current, checked address or null. Send a LinkedIn URL or a person_id:

curl -s "https://api.leadocean.io/v2/people/email/work?linkedin_url=https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY"

That call costs 1 record, including when it returns null. You cannot look a person up by name plus company. Search by domain first, then send the person_id. Field detail is on Find Work Email, and the Find Work Email skill wraps the same steps for Claude.

What you get

The filter values in Step 2 are exact strings. We looked up the email types through the free leadocean_list_enum_values tool on 2026-10-21:

{
  "name": "email_type",
  "total": 7,
  "matched": 7,
  "values": ["work", "work_other", "work_any", "personal", "other", "unknown", "none"]
}

work is an address at the current employer. work_other is usually a former employer and is the one most likely to bounce.

We then ran the Step 2 filters through the free leadocean_count_leads tool on 2026-10-21. It returned an exact total of 819 people at 640 companies, at a cost of 0 records. That number counts VPs in Sales & Business Development in GB whose best email is a verified work address. It is not everyone we hold for those filters.

Each revealed person comes back in the response shape from the API reference. These are placeholder values, not a real person:

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "profile_data": { /* name, title, company for Jane Doe at acme.com */ },
    "contact_data": {
      "has_email": true,
      "email_status": "verified",
      "email_type": "work",
      "contact_emails": [
        {
          "email": "jane.doe@acme.com",
          "type": "work",
          "status": "verified",
          "verified_batch_date": "2026-09-20"
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

Cost of the whole run: 0 records for the connect and the count, 5 for the search, 3 for the reveals. That is 8 records. On the free plan you have 1,000, so this run uses under 1% of them.

Troubleshooting

FAQ