glp1forum-mcp

An MCP stdio server that searches and reads https://glp1forum.com (a XenForo forum) with no API keys. It shells out to system curl because Cloudflare there blocks Node's own TLS fingerprint but passes a real curl with a browser User-Agent.

⚠️ The one gotcha

Verified only with Windows curl 8.18 (Schannel). Linux/macOS curl presents a different TLS fingerprint and may get a 403 from Cloudflare. If every request 403s, this is almost certainly why.

Related MCP server: metasearch-mcp

Requirements

• Node 18+

• System curl on your PATH (curl --version should work)

Tools

• search_forum — full-text search with XenForo filters (keywords, nodes, author, date range, min replies, order, page, maxPages up to 3). Keywords are AND-matched; category nodes need includeChildNodes: true.

• get_thread — read a thread's posts (author, datetime, body, permalink), paginated.

• get_thread_images — opt-in: download a thread's image attachments at full size as image blocks so vision can read image-only pricing tables / stock boards / COA figures. max caps the count (default 4, max 5 — full-size images are token-expensive).

• list_threads — browse a forum section's thread list by nodeId, paginated.

• list_forums — list forum sections with their numeric node IDs (feed these to search_forum.nodes and list_threads.nodeId).

Rate limiting

All requests share a global throttle: ≥2.5s between hits. On HTTP 403/429/503 the server backs off 8s plus up to 10s of jitter and retries once; if still blocked it throws glp1forum rate-limited or unavailable (HTTP 503) — wait ~60s before retrying.

The backoff is deliberately much shorter than the ~60s a Cloudflare 503 actually takes to clear: a handler that slept that long would trip the MCP client's own 60s timeout (-32001), and the sleep holds the search mutex. So it fails fast with a retryable error and asks the caller to wait instead — hence "wait ~60s" in the message.

Two env vars tune this:

• GLP1_BACKOFF_MS (default 8000) — the retry backoff. Raise it if one retry isn't enough.

• GLP1_INTERVAL_MS (default 2500) — the global gap between requests. Raise it for heavy concurrent use; each search costs 2 requests, and 8-way concurrency trips Cloudflare at 2.5s.

Install

Option A — Claude Code plugin marketplace (recommended)

/plugin marketplace add Sedation6612/glp1forum-mcp

Then install the glp1forum-mcp plugin. This auto-wires the MCP server; the plugin's config uses ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} so there are no paths to edit.

Option B — Desktop Extension (.mcpb, one-click Claude Desktop)

Download glp1forum-mcp.mcpb from the repo's Releases and double-click it — Claude Desktop installs it with no paths to edit and no npm install (the server is bundled into a single dependency-free dist/index.mjs). You still need system curl on your PATH.

Option C — manual (Claude Desktop)

Run npm install && npm run build first, then add to claude_desktop_config.json:

"glp1forum": { "command": "node", "args": ["C:\\path\\to\\glp1forum-mcp\\dist\\index.mjs"] }

MSIX Claude Desktop installs put this config under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Claude_pzs8sxrjxfjjc\LocalCache\Roaming\Claude\, not plain %APPDATA%.

Build (contributors)

The distributed artifact is a single bundled dist/index.mjs (esbuild). After editing anything in src/, rebuild and commit dist/:

npm install
npm run build       # -> dist/index.mjs (what the plugin & .mcpb run)
npm run pack        # build + produce glp1forum-mcp.mcpb for Claude Desktop

Self-test

npm run selftest      # or: node src/selftest.js

Makes a few dozen seconds of live requests under the throttle. Failure means curl is being blocked or the site's HTML drifted.

License

All rights reserved (see LICENSE). The source is public for viewing and for contributions back to this repository via pull request. It is not open source — you may not redistribute it or publish your own version. See the LICENSE file for details.