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HEXBIRD documentation
Learn what HEXBIRD can investigate, why MCP is recommended, and how to start immediately with browser chat.
HEXBIRD brings flight tracks, safety events, ownership history, airspace, aviation reference data, infrastructure, and datalink context into one investigative workspace. You can ask a question in browser chat or connect the same tools to your own AI client with MCP.
Choose a path
Recommended: connect your AI client with MCP
For almost all ongoing use, MCP is the best way to use HEXBIRD. Connect Claude, Codex, Cursor, or another OAuth-capable client and let it do the reasoning while HEXBIRD supplies the aviation data, query tools, and investigative guidance.
Compared with the hosted web chat, MCP:
- uses less of your HEXBIRD quota, so you can run substantially more investigations;
- lets you use the latest frontier model available in your client, and choose the model that fits the work;
- makes it easier to cross-correlate or join HEXBIRD results with personal datasets and local files already available to your client.
Fastest start: investigate in the browser
Browser chat requires no configuration. Open HEXBIRD and ask in ordinary language; every data source and query guide is already connected, and the result can become a map, chart, dossier, or shareable report. It is the fastest way to begin or try HEXBIRD before setting up MCP.
What you can investigate
| Question | HEXBIRD sources |
|---|---|
| Where did an aircraft fly, and what did it do there? | Historical and recent ADS-B tracks |
| Did a flight receive a collision-avoidance advisory? | TCAS / ACAS Resolution Advisory events |
| Who owns or previously owned an aircraft? | FAA registration history |
| What airport, runway, frequency, airspace, or obstacle matters? | FAA NASR plus worldwide airport, runway, frequency, and navaid reference data |
| Which published airspace covered a point outside the US? | NASR + OFMX airspace for the covered regions, with a coverage view and per-region AIRAC provenance |
| Was a TFR or NOTAM relevant at that time? | Dynamic TFR and NOTAM records |
| What was said over aircraft datalink? | ACARS and related datalink messages |
| What infrastructure or terrain-adjacent feature is nearby? | OpenStreetMap geometry and tags |
A useful question has four parts
Give HEXBIRD the subject, time, place, and purpose when you know them. Missing details are fine, but explicit bounds make broad archive searches faster and the result easier to verify.
Find every visit by N12345 to the Mojave area between May 1 and May 31, then identify recurring locations and show the supporting tracks.
Walk through a first investigation
For substantial or high-value work
When an investigation needs a more formal, structured, or durable result, HEXBIRD can apply its operating framework for evidence, uncertainty, alternative analysis, and reporting. Agents use it proportionately, so the rigor can increase without forcing every answer into a long report.
Learn about the HEXBIRD Analytic Standard
Know the boundary
HEXBIRD is an investigative research system, not an official FAA, ATC, dispatch, emergency-response, aircraft-separation, or safety-of-life system. Public aviation data can be late, incomplete, contradictory, or wrong. Durable findings should identify their sources, preserve uncertainty, and distinguish observed facts from analytic judgments.