nsf-awards-mcp

MCP server for NSF award and funding data, packaged for one-line activation.

npx -y github:MCP-Hive/nsf-awards-mcp

This is a fork of @access-mcp/nsf-awards by ACCESS-CI, patched so that it starts when launched through npx. All of the NSF query logic is upstream's; see Relationship to upstream.

What it does

One tool, search_nsf_awards, over the NSF Award Search API:

Returns {total, items}, where each item carries award number, title, institution, PI and co-PIs, intended and to-date amounts, start and end dates, and the abstract.

The upstream NSF API needs no API key, no registration, and no payment. NSF award data, abstracts included, is a US government work in the public domain.

Related MCP server: crossref-mcp

Why this fork exists

Upstream's src/index.ts ends with:

if (import.meta.url === `file://${process.argv[1]}`) {
  main().catch(...);
}

npx runs a package through its bin symlink. Node resolves symlinks when computing import.meta.url but leaves process.argv[1] unresolved, so the two are never equal, main() is never called, and the process exits 0 without ever speaking JSON-RPC. The client sees only a closed connection:

$ npx -y @access-mcp/nsf-awards
(exits 0, no output)

This fork calls main() unconditionally, matching what the other servers in the upstream monorepo already do.

Reported upstream as necyberteam/access-mcp#66. If that is fixed and released, this fork stops being necessary.

Relationship to upstream

Forked from necyberteam/access-mcp at commit 99004ce.

Changes made here, and nothing else:

1. src/index.ts — removed the main-module guard described above.

2. vendor/access-mcp-shared/ — vendored packages/shared from the same commit. The published @access-mcp/shared@0.9.0 tarball is older than its own source tree and does not export projectFields, which src/server.ts imports, so resolving that dependency from npm does not build. Vendoring at the pinned commit keeps the tree self-consistent.

3. Packaging — a single bundled server/bundle.mjs and a root bin, so the npx -y github: form works.

src/server.ts is unmodified.

Packaging notes

Upstream is a workspaces monorepo whose root has no bin, so npx against a plain fork of it has nothing to run. This repo is therefore a standalone extraction with one bin at the root.

build-bundle.mjs inlines the source and every runtime dependency into server/bundle.mjs, which is committed. The package declares no runtime dependencies and no prepare script, so npx -y github:... clones the repo and immediately executes — nothing to install, nothing to compile. That matters when the server is cold-started inside a Lambda container.

The bundle is ESM because src/server.ts uses createRequire(import.meta.url). A createRequire shim is injected after the shebang for the CommonJS transitive dependencies that call require() for node builtins.

Development

npm install          # dev dependencies only, needed to rebuild
npm run bundle       # rebuild server/bundle.mjs
npm run smoketest    # spawn the bundle, list tools, run a live NSF query

Verify the published one-liner end to end:

npm run smoketest -- github:MCP-Hive/nsf-awards-mcp

Commit the rebuilt server/bundle.mjs — it is the artifact npx executes.

License

MIT, inherited from ACCESS-CI. See LICENSE.