earthquake-mcp-server

Public Hosted Server: https://earthquake.caseyjhand.com/mcp

Overview

Seismic data from USGS ComCat and the EMSC SeismicPortal. Fetch real-time earthquake feeds, search and count seismic events by time, magnitude, depth, and location, and pull full analysis detail for a single event. Runs as a stdio process, a local Streamable HTTP server, or the public hosted endpoint above.

Tools

Resources

Related MCP server: usgs-earthquakes

Capability reference

earthquake_get_feed tool

• CDN-cached by USGS — faster and more available than the FDSN query API; best for real-time "what's happening now" queries (use earthquake_search for historical or filtered queries)

• Five magnitude tiers: all (microseisms), 1.0, 2.5, 4.5, significant (USGS-curated by magnitude, felt reports, and PAGER impact); four time windows: hour, day, week, month

• Returns event list with counts and the source feed URL

• Paged with an opaque cursor: limit bounds a page (default 100, max 1000), totalCount reports the whole feed, nextCursor retrieves the rest — the broad tiers run past 10,000 events for month

earthquake_search tool

• Dual-source: usgs (global, PAGER/DYFI/ShakeMap metadata) or emsc (independent European-Mediterranean catalog, for cross-verification anywhere); USGS-only filters (alert_level, min_felt, min_significance, event_type) are dropped and named in ignoredFilters when source=emsc

• Location filters: latitude + longitude + radius_km together for a radius search, or independently-optional min_latitude/max_latitude/min_longitude/max_longitude for a bounding box (longitude up to ±360 to cross the antimeridian); combining both intersects the two

• Every event carries event_type in one vocabulary regardless of source (USGS's QuakeML names, EMSC's code decoded to match), with event_certainty alongside for EMSC; the event_type filter narrows to one value on USGS

• Sort by time or magnitude, ascending or descending; up to 20,000 events per call, paged with a 1-based offset forwarded straight to the upstream FDSN API

• A capped result carries totalCount and nextOffset for the next page, or countUnavailable when the follow-up count query failed — use earthquake_count first to size the match set

earthquake_count tool

• Lightweight alternative to earthquake_search for statistical queries; same filter surface (time, magnitude, depth, location radius, bounding box, PAGER, DYFI, significance, event type)

• exceeds_limit flags when the count exceeds 20,000, signaling a full search would need paging; USGS returns the max_allowed cap (20,000), EMSC's count endpoint does not (max_allowed is null)

• Omitting start_time counts only the last 30 days — queryEcho reports the resolved window and every filter actually applied

• A radius over a mining region counts quarry blasts alongside earthquakes — pass event_type="earthquake" on USGS to exclude them

• USGS-specific filters are dropped and named in ignoredFilters when source=emsc, the same as earthquake_search

earthquake_get_event tool

• Returns the normalized event a search result already carries, plus detail — a projection of the analysis products only the single-event response holds

• detail groups: PAGER alert and report link, ShakeMap peak MMI/PGA/PGV and intensity map, DYFI response count and max CDI, moment-tensor scalar moment and nodal planes, landslide and liquefaction alerts, origin quality (azimuthal gap, station count, location and depth uncertainty), finite-fault rupture length and width

• A group is omitted when USGS produced no such product — a small automatic event usually has none, a large reviewed one has most of them

• Event IDs appear in the id field of earthquake_get_feed and earthquake_search results (e.g. us6000sznj, hv74966427)

• USGS-only — EMSC events have no per-event detail endpoint

earthquake://feed/{magnitude_tier}/{time_window} resource

• Path params: magnitude_tier (all / 1.0 / 2.5 / 4.5 / significant) and time_window (hour / day / week / month)

• Returns the whole feed in one read as application/json, no paging — the broad combinations (all or 1.0 with week/month) can run to thousands of events; use earthquake_get_feed for those

• Cached 60 seconds, public scope — USGS regenerates the underlying feed about once a minute

• Lists all 20 tier/window combinations as browsable resources

earthquake://event/{event_id} resource

• event_id is a USGS event ID from an earthquake_get_feed or earthquake_search result

• Returns the same normalized event plus the detail product projection (PAGER, ShakeMap, DYFI, moment tensor, ground-failure alerts, origin quality, finite-fault), omitted when USGS produced none

• Typed not_found, source_unavailable, and source_timeout errors — the same contract as earthquake_get_event

Features

Built on @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.

USGS/EMSC-specific:

• Type-safe clients for the USGS FDSN/GeoJSON API and the EMSC FDSN-WS API, normalizing both into one shared earthquake domain schema

• Automatic retry with backoff and per-request timeouts on every upstream call; detects USGS's rate-limited/CDN failure mode (HTML served instead of GeoJSON) and maps it to a typed service-unavailable error instead of parsing it as data

• EMSC's two-character evtype code is decoded against the published event-type/certainty nomenclature into the same vocabulary USGS publishes, so event_type carries one meaning across both sources

• No API key or rate-limit tier required — both USGS and EMSC are fully public, keyless APIs

Agent-friendly output:

• Provenance — source: "usgs" | "emsc" on every response, plus source_catalog/auth fields naming the catalog and authoritative agency, so agents can weigh two independent solutions against each other

• Discriminated output contracts — event_type and event_certainty travel with every event so a quarry blast or a suspected explosion is never silently read as a confirmed earthquake; exceeds_limit, countUnavailable, and truncated flags let callers branch on data instead of parsing prose

• Response shaping — fields a source does not publish come back null, never a fabricated zero (tsunami, status, and mmi are always null on EMSC events); USGS-only filters dropped for an EMSC query are named in ignoredFilters rather than silently ignored

• Graceful degradation — an upstream rejection surfaces the service's own explanation (offending parameter, accepted format) in the error message instead of a bare status code, and a failed follow-up count degrades to countUnavailable rather than failing the whole search

Getting started

Public Hosted Instance

A public instance is available at https://earthquake.caseyjhand.com/mcp — no installation required. Point any MCP client at it via Streamable HTTP:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "earthquake-mcp-server": {
      "type": "streamable-http",
      "url": "https://earthquake.caseyjhand.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Self-Hosted / Local

Add the following to your MCP client configuration file.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "earthquake-mcp-server": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "bunx",
      "args": ["@cyanheads/earthquake-mcp-server@latest"],
      "env": {
        "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE": "stdio",
        "MCP_LOG_LEVEL": "info"
      }
    }
  }
}

Or with npx (no Bun required):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "earthquake-mcp-server": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@cyanheads/earthquake-mcp-server@latest"],
      "env": {
        "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE": "stdio",
        "MCP_LOG_LEVEL": "info"
      }
    }
  }
}

Or with Docker:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "earthquake-mcp-server": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "docker",
      "args": ["run", "-i", "--rm", "-e", "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE=stdio", "ghcr.io/cyanheads/earthquake-mcp-server:latest"]
    }
  }
}

For Streamable HTTP, set the transport and start the server:

MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE=http MCP_HTTP_PORT=3010 bun run start:http
# Server listens at http://localhost:3010/mcp

Prerequisites

• Bun v1.4.0 or higher.

• No API keys required — USGS and EMSC data is fully public.

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/cyanheads/earthquake-mcp-server.git

2. Navigate into the directory:

cd earthquake-mcp-server

3. Install dependencies:

bun install

Configuration

All configuration is validated at startup via Zod schemas in src/config/server-config.ts. Key environment variables:

Empty values and unsubstituted whole-value ${…} placeholders use the defaults. See .env.example for optional overrides.

Running the server

Local development

• Build and run the production version:

  # One-time build
  bun run rebuild
  
  # Run the built server
  bun run start:http
  # or
  bun run start:stdio

• Run checks and tests:

  bun run devcheck  # Lints, formats, type-checks, and more
  bun run test      # Runs the test suite

Docker

docker build -t earthquake-mcp-server .
docker run --rm -p 3010:3010 earthquake-mcp-server

The Dockerfile defaults to HTTP transport, stateless session mode, and logs to /var/log/earthquake-mcp-server. OpenTelemetry peer dependencies are installed by default — build with --build-arg OTEL_ENABLED=false to omit them.

Project structure

Development guide

See 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 logging, ctx.state for storage

• Register new tools and resources in the createApp() arrays

• Validate upstream data, normalize to domain types, and preserve missing values rather than inventing facts

Contributing

Issues are welcome. Run checks and tests before submitting:

bun run devcheck
bun run test

License

This project is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License. See the LICENSE file for details.