nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server
by cyanheads
README.md
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<h1>@cyanheads/nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server</h1>
<p><b>Decode VINs, search recalls, complaints, crash ratings, and investigations via MCP. STDIO or Streamable HTTP.</b>
<div>7 Tools</div>
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[](./CHANGELOG.md) [](./LICENSE) [](https://github.com/users/cyanheads/packages/container/package/nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server) [](https://modelcontextprotocol.io/) [](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@cyanheads/nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server) [](https://www.typescriptlang.org/) [](https://bun.sh/)
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[](https://github.com/cyanheads/nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server/releases/latest/download/nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server.mcpb) [](https://cursor.com/en/install-mcp?name=nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server&config=eyJjb21tYW5kIjoibnB4IiwiYXJncyI6WyIteSIsIkBjeWFuaGVhZHMvbmh0c2EtdmVoaWNsZS1zYWZldHktbWNwLXNlcnZlciJdfQ==) [](https://vscode.dev/redirect?url=vscode:mcp/install?%7B%22name%22%3A%22nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server%22%2C%22command%22%3A%22npx%22%2C%22args%22%3A%5B%22-y%22%2C%22%40cyanheads/nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server%22%5D%7D)
[](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@cyanheads/mcp-ts-core)
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**Public Hosted Server:** [https://nhtsa.caseyjhand.com/mcp](https://nhtsa.caseyjhand.com/mcp)
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---
## Overview
Vehicle safety data from NHTSA — recall campaigns, consumer complaints, NCAP crash ratings, defect investigations, and VIN decoding. Search, decode, and cross-reference across five NHTSA data sources from any MCP client. Runs as a stdio process, a local Streamable HTTP server, or the public hosted endpoint above.
### Tools
| Tool | Description |
|:---|:---|
| `nhtsa_get_vehicle_safety` | Comprehensive safety profile combining crash test ratings, recalls, and complaint summary with per-section availability status. |
| `nhtsa_search_recalls` | Search recall campaigns by vehicle or campaign number with optional date filtering. |
| `nhtsa_search_complaints` | Consumer safety complaints with component breakdown and severity stats. |
| `nhtsa_get_safety_ratings` | NCAP crash test ratings and ADAS feature availability. |
| `nhtsa_decode_vin` | Decode VINs for make, model, year, engine, safety equipment (single or batch up to 50). |
| `nhtsa_search_investigations` | Search NHTSA defect investigations (PE, EA, DP, RQ, AQ, and more) with cached index. |
| `nhtsa_lookup_vehicles` | Look up valid makes, models, vehicle types, and manufacturer details from VPIC. |
## Capability reference
### `nhtsa_get_vehicle_safety` <sub>tool</sub>
- Combines NCAP crash test ratings, recall history, and complaint summary in a single response
- Frontal crash, side crash, and rollover ratings per vehicle variant
- Recall consequence text plus the do-not-drive, park-outside, and over-the-air-update advisories
- Complaint breakdown by component with crash, fire, injury, and death counts
- Returns `sectionStatus` (available/partial/unavailable per section) plus `warnings` so a partial NHTSA outage is not mistaken for a clean record
---
### `nhtsa_search_recalls` <sub>tool</sub>
- Look up by make/model/year or by specific NHTSA campaign number — the two are mutually exclusive
- Campaign lookups return every make/model the campaign covers, plus the ODI investigation that preceded it
- Optional date range filtering (ISO 8601), applied locally
- Includes do-not-drive advisories, park-outside warnings, and OTA update availability
---
### `nhtsa_search_complaints` <sub>tool</sub>
- Component breakdown covers every matching complaint regardless of pagination; up to 50 complaint narratives per page (default 20), offset pagination, sorted by filing date descending
- Optional `component` filter matches within comma-separated component lists (e.g., "ENGINE", "AIR BAGS")
- Crash, fire, injury, and death counts on both the breakdown and each complaint
- An incident date NHTSA reported that the complaint's own filing date or model year rules out is disclosed as `unreliableIncidentDate` rather than served as the incident date
---
### `nhtsa_get_safety_ratings` <sub>tool</sub>
- Accepts either make + model + modelYear, or a follow-up `vehicleId` from an earlier result
- Frontal crash, side crash (barrier + pole), and rollover ratings, plus ESC/forward-collision/lane-departure ADAS availability
- Per-record complaint, recall, and investigation counts are variant-scoped — not vehicle-level totals
- NCAP coverage starts at 1990, most complete for 2011+ model years
---
### `nhtsa_decode_vin` <sub>tool</sub>
- Single VIN or batch of up to 50; partial VINs accepted using `*` for unknown positions
- Optional `modelYear` helps disambiguate pre-1980 or partial VINs
- Preserves sparse VPIC fields instead of filling missing data with placeholders
- Every result carries VPIC's own `errorCode`/`errorText` decode-quality signal, including the clean "0" case
---
### `nhtsa_search_investigations` <sub>tool</sub>
- Investigation types: Preliminary Evaluations (PE), Engineering Analyses (EA), Defect Petitions (DP), Recall Queries (RQ), Audit Queries (AQ), and additional ODI codes (SQ, EQ, RP, and others)
- Free-text search across investigation IDs, subjects, and summaries, plus structured make, model, and component filters — all ANDed
- `nhtsaId` fetches one investigation by its exact ID, mutually exclusive with the other filters — the reverse of the recall link, closing the campaign-to-investigation round trip
- Sourced from NHTSA's ODI bulk file (`FLAT_INV.zip`) — the first query downloads and parses it (~10s), subsequent queries use the cached index (24h TTL, matching the file's daily refresh)
- Up to 25 investigations per page (default 20), offset pagination
---
### `nhtsa_lookup_vehicles` <sub>tool</sub>
- Four operations: `makes`, `models`, `vehicle_types`, `manufacturer` — partial match supported on make/manufacturer names
- `models` can be filtered by year; `models` and `vehicle_types` both require `make`
- Up to 200 results per page (default 100), offset pagination
- `manufacturer` lookups stop at a 500-record ceiling and disclose `truncated` when more may exist — VPIC publishes no match total
## Features
Built on [`@cyanheads/mcp-ts-core`](https://github.com/cyanheads/mcp-ts-core): stdio and Streamable HTTP transports, pluggable auth (`none` / `jwt` / `oauth`), swappable storage (`in-memory`, `filesystem`, `Supabase`, `Cloudflare KV/R2/D1`), structured logging with optional OpenTelemetry tracing.
NHTSA-specific:
- Type-safe client wrapping four NHTSA JSON APIs with retry logic and sparse-field normalization, plus a streaming parser for the ODI investigations bulk file
- Investigation index caching (24h TTL) for fast repeated queries
- No API key required — all NHTSA APIs are public
Agent-friendly output:
- Provenance: every tool echoes `effectiveQuery` in its enrichment block, so callers can verify exactly what was searched
- Graceful partial failure: `nhtsa_get_vehicle_safety` returns `sectionStatus` per section plus `warnings`, so a partial NHTSA outage isn't mistaken for a clean safety record
- Discriminated outputs: `unreliableIncidentDate` (complaints), VIN decode `errorCode`/`errorText`, and manufacturer-lookup `truncated` disclose data-quality limits rather than silently omitting or fabricating values
## Getting started
### Public Hosted Instance
A public instance is available at `https://nhtsa.caseyjhand.com/mcp` — no installation required. Point any MCP client at it via Streamable HTTP:
```json
{
"mcpServers": {
"nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server": {
"type": "streamable-http",
"url": "https://nhtsa.caseyjhand.com/mcp"
}
}
}
```
### Self-Hosted / Local
Add the following to your MCP client configuration file:
```json
{
"mcpServers": {
"nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server": {
"type": "stdio",
"command": "bunx",
"args": ["@cyanheads/nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server@latest"],
"env": {
"MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE": "stdio",
"MCP_LOG_LEVEL": "info"
}
}
}
}
```
Or with npx (no Bun required):
```json
{
"mcpServers": {
"nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server": {
"type": "stdio",
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "@cyanheads/nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server@latest"],
"env": {
"MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE": "stdio",
"MCP_LOG_LEVEL": "info"
}
}
}
}
```
Or with Docker:
```json
{
"mcpServers": {
"nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server": {
"type": "stdio",
"command": "docker",
"args": ["run", "-i", "--rm", "-e", "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE=stdio", "ghcr.io/cyanheads/nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server:latest"]
}
}
}
```
For Streamable HTTP, set the transport and start the server:
```sh
MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE=http MCP_HTTP_PORT=3010 bun run start:http
# Server listens at http://localhost:3010/mcp
```
### Prerequisites
- [Bun v1.4.0](https://bun.sh/) or higher (or Node.js >= 24.0.0)
### Installation
1. **Clone the repository:**
```sh
git clone https://github.com/cyanheads/nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server.git
```
2. **Navigate into the directory:**
```sh
cd nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server
```
3. **Install dependencies:**
```sh
bun install
```
4. **Configure environment (optional):**
```sh
cp .env.example .env
# edit .env to override transport, auth, or storage defaults — no API key required
```
## Configuration
No API keys required — all NHTSA APIs are public.
| Variable | Description | Default |
|:---------|:------------|:--------|
| `MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE` | Transport: `stdio` or `http`. | `stdio` |
| `MCP_HTTP_HOST` | HTTP server host. | `127.0.0.1` |
| `MCP_HTTP_PORT` | HTTP server port. | `3010` |
| `MCP_HTTP_ENDPOINT_PATH` | HTTP endpoint path. | `/mcp` |
| `MCP_AUTH_MODE` | Auth mode: `none`, `jwt`, or `oauth`. | `none` |
| `MCP_SESSION_MODE` | HTTP session posture: `auto`, `stateful`, or `stateless`. The server declares `stateless` in code — it keeps no per-session state — and this variable overrides that. | `stateless` |
| `MCP_LOG_LEVEL` | Log level (RFC 5424). | `info` |
See [`.env.example`](./.env.example) for the full list of optional overrides.
## Running the server
### Local development
- **Build and run:**
```sh
# One-time build
bun run rebuild
# Run the built server
bun run start:stdio
# or
bun run start:http
```
- **Run checks and tests:**
```sh
bun run devcheck # Lint, format, typecheck, security
bun run test # Vitest test suite
bun run lint:mcp # Validate MCP definitions against spec
```
### Docker
```sh
docker build -t nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server .
docker run --rm -p 3010:3010 nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server
```
The Dockerfile defaults to HTTP transport and logs to `/var/log/nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server`; it restates the stateless session mode the server already declares. OpenTelemetry peer dependencies are installed by default — build with `--build-arg OTEL_ENABLED=false` to omit them.
## Project structure
| Directory | Purpose |
|:----------|:--------|
| `src/index.ts` | `createApp()` entry point — registers tools and inits the NHTSA service. |
| `src/mcp-server/tools/definitions/` | Tool definitions (`*.tool.ts`). |
| `src/services/nhtsa/` | NHTSA API client, ODI bulk-file parser, and field normalization. |
| `tests/` | Unit and integration tests mirroring `src/`. |
## Development guide
See [`CLAUDE.md`](./CLAUDE.md) for development guidelines and architectural rules. The short version:
- Handlers throw, framework catches — no `try/catch` in tool logic
- Use `ctx.log` for request-scoped logging
- One tool per file, `nhtsa_` prefix for every tool name, registered in `createApp()`
- Validate raw NHTSA responses → normalize to domain types → return the output schema; never fabricate a field NHTSA didn't provide
## Data sources
All data comes from NHTSA's public APIs and bulk files:
- **Recalls API** — `api.nhtsa.gov/recalls`
- **Complaints API** — `api.nhtsa.gov/complaints`
- **Safety Ratings API** — `api.nhtsa.gov/SafetyRatings`
- **Investigations bulk file** — `static.nhtsa.gov/odi/ffdd/inv/FLAT_INV.zip`
- **VPIC API** — `vpic.nhtsa.dot.gov/api/vehicles`
## Contributing
Issues are welcome. Run checks and tests before submitting:
```sh
bun run devcheck
bun run test
```
## License
Apache-2.0 — see [LICENSE](LICENSE) for details.
This server cannot be deployed
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