I built a free backlink intelligence skill for AI agents (no Ahrefs subscription needed)

Backlink data shouldn't cost $99/month. So I built backlink-radar — an open-source skill that teaches any AI agent (Claude, Cursor, Kimi, whatever you run) to answer "who links to this site?" using data sources that cost $0.

The problem

Every SEO guide says "check your competitors' backlinks." Then you open Ahrefs or Semrush and hit a paywall before you've learned anything. For side projects and early-stage sites, that's a tax on curiosity.

Meanwhile, a huge amount of link data is sitting in the open:

• Common Crawl — the largest public web crawl, with a free web-graph dataset
• Google Search Console — your own link data, already free
• Open PageRank — free domain authority signals

The data is there. What's missing is the plumbing. That's what the skill is.

What it does

Drop the folder into your agent's skills directory (or paste SKILL.md into a system prompt), and ask:

• "Who links to stripe.com? Give me referring domains."
• "Here's my GSC links export — which pages earn my links?"
• "Link-gap analysis: my site vs two competitors."
• "What should I build to earn backlinks in the dev-tools niche?"

It also ships a 19-check on-page SEO + GEO audit (title/meta/canonical/schema, plus AI-engine readiness: robots.txt AI-bot stance, llms.txt, SSR content) — zero API keys required.

Radical honesty about free data

Free sources give you observed links, not a complete index. Common Crawl lags weeks to months. Dofollow vs nofollow can't be confirmed from crawl data alone. The skill states these limits in its own output instead of pretending to be Ahrefs.

When you outgrow free, the upgrade path is pay-per-call (DataForSEO) — not a subscription you forget to cancel.

The part that turned into a product

Finding who links where is step one. Actually getting the link is the part everyone hates. So alongside the free skill, I run the Backlink Hub — a member directory of sites that accept guest posts, resource listings, and niche edits, with an MCP server your agent can query directly:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "backlink-hub": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://hub.recmoment.net/mcp",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer rmh_YOUR_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

Free tier: 20 directory queries/month. You can earn matching credits by submitting quality sites to the directory — or just subscribe if your time is worth more.

Guardrails are in code, not in a policy page: paid placements always generate rel="sponsored", every site is vetted, and the publish decision always belongs to the publisher.

Links

• Repo (MIT): https://github.com/mingmprod-arch/backlink-radar
• Free Hub API key: https://recmoment.net/hub-portal/

Feedback, issues and PRs welcome. If you run an agent framework and want the tools listed natively, open an issue — happy to add the manifest format you need.