CarClever - Find My Car

A live MCP server for vehicle search and matching across current U.S. new and used inventory. Built on Auto.dev's Starter tier (VIN Decode, Listings, Photos endpoints).

Status: Production live at carclever-find-my-car.vercel.app

What this app does

• Searches current U.S. new and used vehicle inventory by make, model, year, price, mileage, body type, and powertrain

• Hard-filters on user-specified criteria (e.g. price ceiling, max mileage)

• Ranks matches using one of five priority axes: best_for_budget, cheapest, lowest_mileage, newest, lower_risk

  • lower_risk ranks by reported purchase-risk evidence (accident history, CPO status, VIN identity verification) — it is not a vehicle safety guarantee

• Supplies exact-VIN Buyer Check: accident history, CPO status, VIN identity verification

• Links results to Edmunds (Commission Junction affiliate) listing or similar-options pages where available

Related MCP server: connect-claude

Architecture

• Next.js on Vercel (serverless)

• Auto.dev API for live inventory (Starter tier: VIN Decode, Listings, Photos)

• MCP Apps for visual result cards (SEP-1865 standard, supports Claude and ChatGPT)

• Zod for input/output validation

• TypeScript throughout

See TESTING.md for the deterministic regression and release workflow.

For contributors / AI coding sessions

Before making changes, read TESTING.md — it describes the test-first workflow and release gates. Run npm test to validate any code change.

All regression suites are deterministic and offline (no network calls, no mutable state).

Production operation

Deployed SHA always matches main branch in GitHub. Vercel deployment status is the source of truth for live status.

Docs & decisions

Design decisions, provider data audit, API contracts, and field handling live in the carclever-widget repo:

• DECISIONS.md — full decision history

• specs/Auto_Dev_Field_Audit_v1.md — provider field reliability and coercion rules

• STATE.md — current session and session archive