Phonetic Encoding Skill

Overview

Phonetic Encoder implements both algorithms directly. Each word is trimmed, uppercased and stripped of everything except A to Z before encoding, so digits, spaces, apostrophes and accented letters are dropped. A word with no letters left encodes to an empty string.

Soundex keeps the first letter and maps the remaining consonants to digits: B F P V to 1, C G J K Q S X Z to 2, D T to 3, L to 4, M N to 5 and R to 6. Adjacent letters with the same digit collapse into one. Vowels and Y separate repeats, so the second P in "Pepper" is still coded, while H and W do not, so "Ashcraft" encodes as A261. The code is padded with zeros or cut to exactly four characters.

Metaphone applies English spelling rules and has no fixed length. It drops the silent first letter of KN, GN, PN, AE and WR, turns WH into W and an initial X into S, keeps a vowel only when it is the first letter, and maps letter groups to sounds: PH to F, a C before I, E or Y to S, CH and SH to X, TH to 0 (theta), DGE to J. Repeated letters other than C are skipped. "Smith" and "Smythe" both encode as SM0.

`algorithm` is `soundex`, `metaphone` or `both` (the default) and controls which codes are returned. Passing `compare` switches to comparison mode: `word1` and `word2` echo the trimmed inputs, and `soundex` and `metaphone` become objects holding `word1Code`, `word2Code` and a boolean `match` that is true when the two codes are identical. The response is identical on every plan.

Live Test Phonetic Encoding Skill Skill →

The tool

Once your client is connected to the VerveKit server, this appears in its tool list as PhoneticEncodingSkill. It is read-only and open-world — it fetches and never mutates anything on your side — so most clients call it without asking you to confirm.

Tool call

{
  "name": "PhoneticEncodingSkill",
  "arguments": {
    "word": "smith"
  }
}

You do not name the tool yourself; the model picks it. Asking about smith in the terms this skill covers is enough for it to reach for PhoneticEncodingSkill on its own — naming it explicitly also works, and is the way to force the call.

Connecting

One server URL covers every skill in the catalog, including this one. Authorization is OAuth: the client opens a browser once, and there is no key to paste into a config file.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vervekit": {
      "url": "https://api.vervekit.com/v1/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Per-client setup — Claude, Cursor, VS Code, ChatGPT — is on the MCP setup page.

Arguments

These are the properties on the tool's inputSchema, so a well-behaved client validates them before the call is made. Premium arguments are accepted on every plan but only take effect on plans that include them.

Argument	Type	Description
`word`Required	string	The word to encode phonetically
`algorithm`Optional	string	Algorithm to use `soundexmetaphoneboth` default both

What the model gets back

The result carries a structuredContent object matching the tool's declared outputSchema, so a client reads fields without parsing prose. status is "ok" and error is null on success; a null field means the value was not available for that input, not that the call failed.

Result

{
  "status": "ok",
  "error": null,
  "data": {
    "word": "smith",
    "soundex": "S530",
    "metaphone": "SM0"
  }
}

Response fields

Paths are relative to data. Premium fields are absent rather than zeroed on plans that do not include them, so check for presence instead of comparing to 0.

Field	Type	Example	Description
`word`	string	`smith`	Original word that was encoded
`soundex`	string	`S530`	Soundex codes for the words, and whether they match
`metaphone`	string	`SM0`	Metaphone codes for the words, and whether they match

Failure modes

Errors come back as tool errors carrying a sentence the model can act on, not a bare status code. Error handling covers the full list.

Status	What it means
`400` / `422`	The arguments did not validate. The message names the offending one.
`401`	The OAuth session is invalid or expired — reconnect the server.
`403`	Blocked by a key restriction or an IP allow-list. Never a bad identity.
`404`	This skill is not part of VerveKit. Check the catalog.
`429`	Out of credits, or a brief rate limit. The message tells them apart.

A call costs 2 credits each time the tool actually runs; a model that reasons about the tool without calling it costs nothing.

Use cases

Name Matching: Find similar names despite spelling variations
Search Enhancement: Improve search results with phonetic matching
Data Deduplication: Identify duplicate records with name variations
Genealogy Research: Match historical records with spelling variations

Other ways to use Phonetic Encoding Skill

Set up Phonetic Encoding Skill on VerveKit, or reach the same source a different way. Your VerveKit account and credits work on all of them — one key, one balance.

Call it as a REST APIOne HTTPS endpoint and an x-api-key header, with SDKs for Node, Python and .NET.APIVerve →Reference →

Google Sheets or ExcelA =VERVE() formula fills a column — no script, no export, recalculates in place.VerveSheets →Reference →