mealie-mcp

Connect Claude to your self-hosted Mealie. Each person in your household signs in with their own Mealie account, and Claude works with their recipes, meal plans, and shopping lists as them.

"What's for dinner this week? Add the ingredients to my shopping list."

It is a remote MCP server that runs next to Mealie in Docker. It works with Claude (web, Desktop, and mobile), Claude Code, and any MCP client that supports OAuth.

What you need

• Mealie v3 running with Docker Compose. Tested with v3.27 and v3.28.

• Mealie reachable on a public HTTPS address, for example through Cloudflare Tunnel or a reverse proxy. Claude connects from Anthropic's cloud, even when you use Claude Desktop.

Related MCP server: Mealie MCP Server

1. Add it to your compose file

Add the mealie-mcp service and its volume to the compose file that runs Mealie. This is Mealie's PostgreSQL example with the additions:

services:
  mealie:
    image: ghcr.io/mealie-recipes/mealie:v3.28.0
    container_name: mealie
    # ... everything else unchanged from Mealie's docs ...
    environment:
      BASE_URL: https://mealie.yourdomain.com
      # ...

  postgres:
    # ... unchanged ...

  mealie-mcp:
    image: ghcr.io/greirson/mealie-mcp:latest
    container_name: mealie-mcp
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "9926:8080"   # only needed if your proxy or tunnel reaches it through the host
    volumes:
      - mealie-mcp-data:/data
    environment:
      PUBLIC_URL: https://mealie.yourdomain.com         # same as Mealie's BASE_URL
      MEALIE_URL: http://mealie:9000
      MEALIE_PUBLIC_URL: https://mealie.yourdomain.com
      MCP_ENCRYPTION_KEY: ${MCP_ENCRYPTION_KEY}
    depends_on:
      - mealie

volumes:
  mealie-data:
  mealie-pgdata:
  mealie-mcp-data:

The full file is in docker-compose.example.yml.

Create the encryption key once, in the same folder as the compose file, and keep it safe:

echo "MCP_ENCRYPTION_KEY=$(openssl rand -base64 32)" >> .env
docker compose up -d

2. Send /mcp to it

Serve the MCP on Mealie's own address. Your proxy sends these two path prefixes to mealie-mcp on port 8080, and everything else to Mealie as before:

• /mcp

• /.well-known/oauth-

Sharing Mealie's address is what lets people connect with one click, using the Mealie login they already have.

Cloudflare Tunnel: add a public hostname for your Mealie host with path ^/(mcp|\.well-known/oauth-) and service http://mealie-mcp:8080 (or http://<docker-host>:9926). Put it above your existing Mealie entry for that host. Do not put Cloudflare Access in front of these paths, because it blocks Claude's servers. If you use Cloudflare, also set TRUST_CLOUDFLARE: "true".

Caddy:

mealie.yourdomain.com {
    @mcp path /mcp /mcp/* /.well-known/oauth-*
    reverse_proxy @mcp mealie-mcp:8080
    reverse_proxy mealie:9000
}

Traefik: route PathPrefix(`/mcp`) || PathPrefix(`/.well-known/oauth-`) on your Mealie host to mealie-mcp:8080, with a higher priority than the Mealie router.

Check it: this should return JSON whose endpoints start with https://mealie.yourdomain.com/mcp/oauth/.

curl https://mealie.yourdomain.com/.well-known/oauth-authorization-server

You can also give the MCP its own hostname instead. Set PUBLIC_URL to that hostname. People then connect by pasting a Mealie API token instead of clicking Allow.

3. Connect Claude

1. In Claude, open Settings, then Connectors, then Add custom connector.

2. Enter https://mealie.yourdomain.com/mcp and click Connect.

3. If you are signed in to Mealie in that browser, click Allow. Otherwise sign in to Mealie first, then click Continue.

For Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http mealie https://mealie.yourdomain.com/mcp

Each person connects with their own account. Connecting creates a Mealie API token named "Claude MCP: ..." on their profile. To disconnect, delete that token in Mealie under Profile, then API Tokens.

What Claude can do

• Recipes: search, read, create, import from a URL, update, delete, duplicate, suggest from ingredients on hand, parse ingredients, mark as made, bulk tag.

• Meal plans: list, see today's meals, add, move, delete, add a random meal.

• Shopping lists: list, read, create, delete, add, check off and remove items, add or remove a recipe's ingredients.

• Catalog: foods, units, tags, categories, tools, and cookbooks.

• Anything else: a guarded raw API tool for other Mealie endpoints. It cannot reach admin, login, or account endpoints.

Everything runs with the signed-in person's Mealie permissions.

Configuration

Security

• Mealie tokens are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM. Claude's tokens are stored only as SHA-256 hashes.

• Claude's refresh tokens rotate on every use. Reusing an old one signs that connection out.

• The sign-in page shows which app is asking and where the code goes, and only accepts submissions from the page itself.

• Recipe text imported from websites is untrusted. The raw API tool blocks endpoints that could create credentials, invite users, or change passwords, even if a prompt injection asks for them.

Development

Requires Node 24 and Docker.

npm install
npm test            # unit and end-to-end tests with a mocked Mealie
npm run typecheck
npm run live:up     # throwaway Mealie on :9925 plus this server on :8080
npm run test:live   # exercise every tool against the real Mealie
npm run live:down

License

MIT. Not affiliated with the Mealie project.