Board Ontology

What's here

27 cited KPIs publicly exposed today; ~140 in the catalog.

• 27 industry-backed KPIs (tier: "published" in the JSON) — anchored to a third-party standard (SMSB, KBCM, Carta, Mercer, SaaS Capital, Retently, NVCA, YC SAFE, SHRM). Each has a dedicated page on this site with the cited source, formula, benchmarks, and interpretation notes. Pulled live from app.imboard.ai/api/ontology.json.
• ~116 more KPIs are authored in the catalog but don't yet carry a definitionSource attribution. Each release we back-attribute more — see methodology for how new entries get cited and promoted. Track progress in epic #1415.

Three ways to use it

• Browse here — start with the domain index below. Industry-backed KPIs have a dedicated page each.
• Fetch the JSON — full live catalog at app.imboard.ai/api/ontology.json (27 cited entries today, no auth) or the docs-build snapshot at docs.imboard.ai/api/ontology/index.json (same 27, snapshotted at docs build, no auth). Both open in any browser.
• Wire it into your AI assistant — see the 30-second snippet below.

Plug the ontology into your AI assistant

What you get. Ask Claude, Cursor, Cline, Continue, Goose, or any MCP-compatible client: "what's the SMSB definition of NRR?" or "what's the median CAC payback for early-stage SaaS?" — and get back the cited definition, formula, and benchmarks from this ontology, in-chat, with sources you can defend in a board meeting.

Free signup, token in 30 seconds. Create a free I'mBoard account and a personal access token at Account → API Access. The token is the only thing the MCP server needs to talk to I'mBoard on your behalf. Read-only against the public catalog by default — no data about your company leaves your machine unless you point an agent at your own boards.

Copy-paste mcp.json snippet:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "imboard": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@imboard.ai/mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "IMBOARD_API_BASE_URL": "https://app.imboard.ai",
        "IMBOARD_API_TOKEN": "imb_pat_YOUR_TOKEN"
      }
    }
  }
}

Or in Claude Code, the one-command equivalent:

claude mcp add imboard \
  -e IMBOARD_API_BASE_URL=https://app.imboard.ai \
  -e IMBOARD_API_TOKEN=imb_pat_YOUR_TOKEN \
  -- npx -y @imboard.ai/mcp-server

Pull the plug any time by removing the entry from your config. The ontology tools are browse_rogue_kpis and get_rogue_kpi.

What I'mBoard adds on top. The open ontology is the foundation. The I'mBoard product builds on it — change tracking and versioning of definitions over time, AI agents that run against your actual numbers using these definitions, a UI to browse, customize, and adopt KPIs for your board, and a CLI for programmatic use. For the full MCP setup, the rest of the 135 tools across 28 domains (most of which do need a token to do anything with your board), and the token flow, see /docs/guides/claude-code-and-mcp.

Why this exists

Three tools, three different ARR numbers, same board meeting. Most dashboards render metrics without saying what they mean — "ARR" alone has at least three common definitions in circulation, and a director who challenges a definition mid-meeting can knock a CEO off their footing for the rest of the agenda.

Every KPI here is anchored to a third-party standard where one exists (SMSB, KBCM, Carta, Mercer, SaaS Capital, Retently). Where one doesn't yet, I'mBoard authors a definition rather than ship a metric you can't defend. When I'mBoard's calculation diverges from a cited standard, the divergence is documented on the KPI page.

For the longer story behind Rogue and the X-Men metaphor, see imboard.ai/ontology.

Domains

Finance

Cash, revenue, burn, runway, expenses — 1 industry-backed KPI.

Sales

ARR, bookings, pipeline, deals, forecast — 10 industry-backed KPIs.

HR

Headcount, hiring, attrition, compensation — 4 industry-backed KPIs.

Product

Roadmap, delivery, R&D efficiency, quality — 1 industry-backed KPI.

Customers

Retention, health, NPS, concentration — 5 industry-backed KPIs.

Fundraising

Round status, investor pipeline, cap table — 5 industry-backed KPIs.

Operations

Cross-functional operational metrics — 1 industry-backed KPI.

Machine-readable access

How attribution works

Every page surfaces a definitionSource block with:

• tier — published (industry-backed) or editorial (I'mBoard-authored)
• sourceName and sourceUrl — the standard (or I'mBoard) and its canonical page
• publicationDate — when the cited edition was published
• attributionNotice — verbatim text required by the source publication, surfaced on every page that uses it

Industry-backed (published) KPIs are surfaced as dedicated pages on this site AND in the live JSON / MCP. KPIs authored in the catalog but not yet carrying a definitionSource are tracked internally and aren't exposed publicly until they're attributed — see methodology for the policy and epic #1415 for the back-attribution workstream.