ContactGraphAI LinkedIn contacts
Your LinkedIn contacts should work with any AI — not just LinkedIn’s.
LinkedIn built a trillion-dollar business on your professional relationships — then locked that data inside their platform. You can’t use AI to search your own network, find warm introductions, or automate outreach without violating their terms. ContactGraph gives you back ownership of your contact data so any AI tool can help you use it.
Last updated June 2026
The problem
Why your LinkedIn contacts are trapped
You’ve spent years building a professional network on LinkedIn — hundreds or thousands of connections representing real relationships. But that data isn’t yours in any meaningful sense. LinkedIn controls how you access it, what tools can use it, and what you can do with it.
Want to ask Claude “who do I know in fintech?” LinkedIn says no — there’s no consumer API for that. Want to use AI to draft personalized outreach based on your connection history? LinkedIn’s automation policies prohibit it. Want to merge your LinkedIn contacts with your phone contacts into one searchable graph? LinkedIn actively prevents it.
The result is a massive gap between what AI can do and what LinkedIn allows. Professionals in sales, recruiting, job seeking, and business development are searching for ways to use AI with their LinkedIn contacts — and finding that the platform they trusted with their network won’t let them.
This isn’t a technology problem. LinkedIn could open an API tomorrow. It’s a business model problem — LinkedIn monetizes your network through Sales Navigator, Recruiter, and Premium subscriptions, and giving you free AI access would undermine that.
Available approaches
How people try to connect AI to LinkedIn
Stay inside LinkedIn’s ecosystem
Use LinkedIn Premium, Sales Navigator, or Recruiter — LinkedIn’s own (expensive) tools for network search.
Pros
- +Official, fully supported by LinkedIn
- +Real-time data — always current
- +Integrated messaging and InMail
Cons
- –Premium: $30–60/month, limited search
- –Sales Navigator: $100+/month
- –No AI agent or MCP integration
- –Data locked in LinkedIn — no export for AI tools
Scrape or automate against LinkedIn
Browser extensions, headless browsers, and MCP servers that simulate human browsing.
Pros
- +Access to LinkedIn’s full interface
- +Can automate search, messaging, and outreach
- +Works with AI through MCP bridges
Cons
- –Explicitly prohibited by LinkedIn TOS
- –Accounts get restricted or banned regularly
- –Fragile — breaks on every LinkedIn UI change
- –Ethical concerns around unsolicited automation
Export and own your data (ContactGraph)
Download your LinkedIn connections, merge with other contact sources, and use any AI tool via MCP.
Pros
- +You own your data — export or delete anytime
- +Works with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and any MCP client
- +Merges LinkedIn + phone + shared graphs
- +Open source, nonprofit, free forever
- +Enriches contacts with current employer and role
Cons
- –Snapshot model — re-export to refresh
- –Doesn’t replace LinkedIn messaging
- –One-time setup required
The solution
How to use AI with your LinkedIn contacts today
You don’t need LinkedIn’s permission to use AI with your own professional relationships. Export your data, own your graph, and connect any AI tool.
- 1
Export your professional network
Download your LinkedIn Connections.csv (Settings → Data Privacy → Get a copy of your data). Optionally export your phone contacts too. These are your relationships — LinkedIn is just one place you stored them.
- 2
Build your unified contact graph
Upload everything to ContactGraph. It deduplicates, enriches contacts with current employer and role from public data, and builds a searchable relationship graph you fully own.
- 3
Connect your preferred AI tool
ContactGraph runs as an MCP server, so Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Cursor, and terminal-based agents can all query your network. No vendor lock-in — switch AI tools anytime.
- 4
Put your network to work
Use AI for what it’s actually good at: finding patterns in your network, identifying warm paths, drafting personalized messages, and matching opportunities to relationships. Your contacts, your AI, your rules.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
- Can I use AI with my LinkedIn contacts legally?
- Yes. LinkedIn provides an official data export that includes your connections. Using that exported data with AI tools like Claude is fully within your rights. What LinkedIn prohibits is automated scraping of their live platform — not using data they explicitly let you download.
- What AI tools work with exported LinkedIn contacts?
- Any AI tool that supports MCP (Model Context Protocol) can query your ContactGraph network — including Claude Desktop, Claude Code, ChatGPT, Gemini, Cursor, and custom agents. ContactGraph also provides a skill.md for terminal-based AI workflows.
- Will using AI with my LinkedIn contacts get me banned?
- Not if you use ContactGraph. It works from your exported data, not by automating actions on LinkedIn’s platform. Scraping-based tools and automated outreach bots are what trigger account restrictions.
- How is ContactGraph different from LinkedIn Premium or Sales Navigator?
- LinkedIn’s paid tools keep your data locked on their platform with no AI integration. ContactGraph lets you own your network data and connect it to any AI tool via MCP — for free. It also merges phone contacts and shared graphs that LinkedIn never sees.
- Can ContactGraph help with sales, recruiting, and job seeking?
- Yes. Sales professionals use it to find warm paths to prospects. Recruiters use it to identify mutual connections for candidate outreach. Job seekers use it to find who they know at companies with open roles. The same graph powers all three use cases.
- Is ContactGraph a nonprofit? Why does that matter?
- Yes. ContactGraph is an open-source nonprofit with no investors and no data-selling business model. Your contact graph is never monetized, never shared, and never used to train AI models. You can self-host the entire stack from GitHub if you want full control.
Get started
Export once. Connect any AI. Own your network.
Upload your LinkedIn connections and phone contacts. ContactGraph builds your graph and exposes it to Claude, ChatGPT, and any MCP client — free, open source, and never sells your data.
Nonprofit · Open source · Never shares your data · Free forever