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meta-data-mcp

by derekslinz
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Python
Hybrid

meta-data-mcp

A single MCP server that transparently routes user requests to 83 open-data sources.

meta-data-mcp is one MCP server — not many. Under the hood it bundles 83 plugins, each wrapping a different open-data API. The plugins are an implementation detail; from your LLM's perspective there is one server and one place to ask "where can I find data about X?"

You install one server. You get all the data, discoverable through built-in routing tools.

Why "meta"?

Finding open data isn't the hard part — there's an absurd amount of it available. The hard part is finding the right dataset when you need it. meta-data-mcp makes that automatic:

  • The LLM calls opendata.providers.find ("FX rates", "court rulings", "earthquakes near Lisbon") and the server routes the query against an internal registry of every bundled plugin.

  • The LLM then calls the matching tool directly. No setup step in between, no separate servers, no per-provider install rituals.

This project was forked from opendata-mcp and reshaped around the single-server idea once the catalogue passed a few dozen plugins.

Installation

You'll need uv (a Python package manager).

# macOS — install uv via Homebrew so MCP clients can find it
brew install uv

# Linux
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

# Windows (PowerShell)
powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex"

Then register the server with every MCP client installed on your machine:

uv run meta-data-mcp setup

The command auto-detects which MCP clients you have installed and adds one meta-data-mcp entry under mcpServers in each. Supported clients:

Client

Config file

Claude Desktop

~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS) / %APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (Windows)

Claude Code

~/.claude.json

Cursor

~/.cursor/mcp.json

Windsurf

~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json

Gemini CLI

~/.gemini/settings.json

LM Studio

~/.cache/lm-studio/mcp.json

Each existing config is backed up to <file>.bak before writing. Restart the affected client(s) and you'll see one new server with discovery tools available immediately; plugin tools can then be activated on demand.

Inspect what's detected / configured on your machine:

uv run meta-data-mcp clients

Target a single client (or write to every supported client regardless of detection):

uv run meta-data-mcp setup --client claude-code
uv run meta-data-mcp setup --client all

If you want to see the JSON snippet without touching any config file (e.g. to paste into a client we don't support yet):

uv run meta-data-mcp setup --print-json

When META_DATA_MCP_AUTH_TOKEN is set, --print-json also surfaces the SSE-client snippet (with the real token) to stderr so you can wire a remote client.

Hosting meta-data-mcp as a remote SSE server

For deploying behind your own domain with bearer-token authentication, see docs/hosting.md. It covers systemd, Caddy/nginx TLS termination, token rotation, and the threat model.

CLI

There is one server, so the CLI takes no "provider" argument. Every command operates on the one meta-data-mcp server.

Command

What it does

uv run meta-data-mcp run

Run the server (default SSE; pass --transport stdio for Claude Desktop).

uv run meta-data-mcp setup

Register the server in detected MCP client configs (or one target via --client).

uv run meta-data-mcp remove

Unregister the server from detected MCP client configs (or one target via --client).

uv run meta-data-mcp cleanup

Detect and remove legacy multi-server entries (--apply to commit).

uv run meta-data-mcp inspect

Launch mcp-inspector against the server.

uv run meta-data-mcp list

Informational: list the internal plugins bundled in this server.

uv run meta-data-mcp info

Informational: show server overview. Pass --plugin <name> for plugin-level details.

uv run meta-data-mcp version

Print the package version.

The list command exists for transparency about what's bundled — plugins are not separately installable, runnable, or addressable. They are loaded automatically when the server starts.

Server tools (what the LLM calls)

Once meta-data-mcp is running, the LLM has access to two layers of tools — and you don't need to mention either to the user:

  1. Meta tools — the 13 server-level tools below. They make routing transparent: the LLM uses them to find, activate, and (if needed) create the right plugin without you telling it which tool to call.

  2. Plugin tools — ~330 tools coming from the 83 bundled plugins. In the default discovery-only mode they are activated per provider at runtime (or preloaded via META_DATA_MCP_PRELOAD). The LLM picks one after consulting the meta tools.

Meta tools

Tool

Purpose

opendata.providers.find

Free-text search over the plugin registry. Returns ranked matches. When nothing matches the response carries a no_match: true flag and a next_step hint pointing at opendata.plugins.draft + opendata.plugins.create.

opendata.explain.choice

Show the scoring breakdown for a search (useful for debugging routing decisions).

opendata.domains.list

Enumerate the controlled domain vocabulary (health, legal, finance, earth-science, …).

opendata.regions.list

Enumerate the controlled region vocabulary (us, eu, uk, global, …).

opendata.providers.describe

Full metadata for one plugin by id — title, description, domains, regions, keywords, homepage, required env vars.

opendata.providers.list

Paginated dump of the whole registry.

opendata.providers.activate

Activate one provider so its tools become callable in this session.

opendata.providers.deactivate

Remove an activated provider's tools from the current session catalog.

opendata.providers.list_active

List currently active providers and the tool names each contributes.

opendata.health.snapshot

Return per-provider health scores used by discovery health badges and routing context.

opendata.plugins.draft

Build a validated plugin YAML spec from structured inputs. Takes id, base_url, tool definitions (name, endpoint, params), and registry metadata. Validates id/tool-name casing, path-placeholder/param consistency, and parameter types, then emits a YAML string ready to feed into opendata.plugins.create. Use this so the LLM never has to hand-author YAML.

opendata.plugins.create

Autonomously create a new plugin. Takes a YAML spec (typically produced by opendata.plugins.draft), runs the generator, imports the new module, registers it in the live registry, and hot-loads its tools onto the running server. Use this when opendata.providers.find returns no match.

opendata.tool.call

Proxy-call an activated plugin tool by name for environments that cannot directly invoke dynamically added tools.

The autonomous discovery flow

The reason this server is called "meta" is that it routes data requests on the user's behalf — including by creating the route when one doesn't exist yet. The full flow:

  1. User asks for data, e.g. "show me the most recent published CVEs."

  2. LLM calls opendata.providers.find with the query (cve, vulnerability, …).

  3. If the registry has a match: the LLM activates the matching provider (opendata.providers.activate, or activate_top in find) and then calls the plugin tool.

  4. If the registry has no match: the response includes no_match: true and a next_step field that explains the autonomous creation path. The LLM:

    1. Tells the user it's about to add coverage for this data source.

    2. Web-searches for an open API that exposes the requested data (e.g. the NVD or CIRCL CVE API).

    3. Calls opendata.plugins.draft with the API's id, base URL, and structured tool definitions. The server validates the inputs (id casing, path-placeholder consistency, parameter types) and returns a YAML string.

    4. Passes that YAML to opendata.plugins.create. The server materializes the plugin module + tests, imports the module, registers a ProviderEntry in the in-memory dynamic registry, and merges the new tools into the running server's tool list.

    5. Calls the newly-available tool to answer the user's original question.

  5. User gets their answer — and the plugin remains available for the rest of the session.

The materialized plugin lives on disk (meta_data_mcp/providers/{id}.py + tests/providers/test_{id}.py); contributors can clean it up, add it to meta_data_mcp/registry.py as a static entry, and open a PR so it becomes part of every shipped install.

Plugin tools

Every bundled plugin contributes its own tools under the one server. Their names are unique kebab-case identifiers, often using a provider-specific prefix (e.g. usgs-eq-feed-significant-week, frankfurter-latest, wikipedia-fetch-summary). The LLM discovers them through opendata.providers.find/opendata.providers.describe, activates the provider when needed, and can inspect session state with opendata.providers.list_active.

Presentation layer (MCP Apps)

v2.0 adds a visual layer on top of every tool result. Hosts that support the MCP Apps extension (Claude Desktop, MCP Inspector, others) render bound tool results inline as interactive panels in a sandboxed iframe instead of as JSON text. Hosts that don't speak MCP Apps fall back to the same JSON they always got — the binding is purely additive.

Each MCP-Apps-aware tool declares its panel via _meta.ui.resourceUri on the tool description. The host fetches the ui:// resource (HTML + bundled JS, single payload, no external requests besides explicitly-whitelisted CDNs) and dispatches bidirectional postMessage events between the iframe and itself.

Shape primitives — ui://meta-data-mcp/shape/<name>/v1

Three reusable bundles cover the common payload contracts. Any tool whose response matches one of these shapes binds to the corresponding primitive automatically and gets a rich renderer for free.

Shape

Renders

Payload contract

timeseries/v1

Line chart + auto-computed profile (min/max/mean/stddev/gap-count) via Plotly.

{points: [{date, value, series?}], axes: {x, y}, annotations?}

geofeatures/v1

Leaflet map + marker cluster (with density layer for high-cardinality outputs).

`{features: GeoJSON

[{lat, lon, attrs}], layers?, facets?}`

records/v1

Faceted, sortable, paginated HTML table + per-column auto-profile (type inference, top-k, null rate, range).

{rows: [...], schema?, default_facets?}

Custom apps — ui://meta-data-mcp/app/<name>/v1

Some data shapes don't fit a generic primitive. v2.0 ships dedicated apps for them:

App

Drives

Visualization

discovery/v1

opendata.providers.find, opendata.domains.list, opendata.regions.list, opendata.providers.activate, etc.

Faceted plugin browser with live health badges.

vulnerability/v1

nvd-*, osv-*, epss-*, cisa-kev.

CVSS radar + severity heatmap + exploitation-probability gauge.

entity-graph/v1

crossref-works-by-author, openalex-search-works, wikidata-search-entities, opensanctions-search.

Force-directed graph (D3) with co-authorship overlay.

trade-flows/v1

comtrade-trade-data.

Reporter → commodity → partner Sankey + commodity treemap.

news-tone/v1

gdelt-article-search, gdelt-volume-timeline.

Volume + tone timeline with country-pair chord diagram.

network-topology/v1

ripestat-asn-neighbours and friends.

Force-directed ASN peering/upstream/downstream graph.

molecular/v1

pubchem-compound, pdb-entry.

WebGL 3D structure viewer (3Dmol.js, cartoon for proteins, stick+sphere for ligands).

museum/v1

met-search, met-search-by-artist, met-get-object.

Lazy-loaded CSS-grid image gallery + provenance detail panel.

Building new apps

Adding a UI binding to a generated provider is now a one-line spec change:

tools:
  - name: my-tool
    description: ...
    endpoint: /foo
    response_shape: records   # ← binds to the shape primitive

See tools/specs/README.md for the full reference. Bundle-size budgets are enforced in CI (warn ≥ 100 KB, error ≥ 1 MB); the v2.0 bundles range from 14 KB (timeseries primitive) to 34 KB (vulnerability app), all comfortably inside the budget.

Bundled plugins (83)

This is what's inside the one server. You don't install these individually — they all come along.

Government / Civic

Plugin

Source

Description

au_data_gov

Australian Government Open Data

CKAN catalog at data.gov.au

ca_open_gov

Canada Open Data

CKAN catalog at open.canada.ca

fr_data_gouv

data.gouv.fr

French government open data platform

nl_tweedekamer

Tweede Kamer

Dutch Parliament open data

sg_data_gov

Singapore Open Data

data.gov.sg datasets and collections

uk_gov

data.gov.uk

UK government CKAN catalog

us_cary

Town of Cary Open Data

Town of Cary, NC open data via Socrata — public safety, transportation, utilities, parks

us_data_gov

Data.gov

US federal government open datasets

us_fayetteville

City of Fayetteville Open Data

City of Fayetteville, NC open data via Socrata — public safety, infrastructure, community services

us_raleigh

City of Raleigh Open Data

City of Raleigh open data via Socrata — public safety, infrastructure, parks, planning

Statistics / Economics

Plugin

Source

Description

eu_eurostat

Eurostat

European Union statistics

global_imf

International Monetary Fund

IMF SDMX 2.1 statistical data

global_faostat

FAOSTAT

UN food and agriculture statistics — production, prices, trade, land use, emissions

global_dbnomics

DBnomics

Global economic data aggregator (IMF, World Bank, etc.)

global_oecd

OECD

OECD economic & social statistics (SDMX)

global_world_bank

World Bank

Development indicators by country

nl_cbs

Statistics Netherlands (CBS)

Dutch statistical datasets (OData v2/v3)

uk_ons

UK ONS

UK Office for National Statistics

Finance / Markets

Plugin

Source

Description

eu_ecb

European Central Bank

ECB data portal (SDMX) — FX, monetary, banking

global_coingecko

CoinGecko

Cryptocurrency market data

global_frankfurter

Frankfurter

ECB reference FX rates (key-less)

us_sec_edgar

SEC EDGAR

Public company filings, XBRL financials

us_treasury_fiscal

US Treasury Fiscal Data

Federal debt, daily Treasury statement, FX rates

Health & Life Sciences

Plugin

Source

Description

global_disease_sh

disease.sh

COVID-19, influenza, vaccine aggregator

global_pubchem

NCBI PubChem

Chemical compounds and substances

global_rcsb_pdb

RCSB PDB

3D protein and macromolecular structures

global_who_gho

WHO GHO

WHO Global Health Observatory (OData)

us_cdc_socrata

US CDC

CDC open data via Socrata

us_clinicaltrials

ClinicalTrials.gov

NIH/NLM clinical trials registry v2

us_fda_openfda

openFDA

FDA adverse events, recalls, labels

us_healthdata_gov

HealthData.gov

HHS open health data via Socrata — outcomes, insurance, demographics, public health

Earth Science / Weather / Environment

Plugin

Source

Description

eu_copernicus

Copernicus (EU)

European Earth observation and climate datasets

global_open_meteo

Open-Meteo

Weather forecast + historical + air quality

global_openaq

OpenAQ

Global air-quality measurements from reference monitors and sensors

us_ncdeq_gis

NC DEQ Environmental GIS

NC Dept. of Environmental Quality ArcGIS Hub — permits, air/water quality, hazardous waste

us_noaa_ncei

NOAA NCEI

Climate data access services (key-less)

us_noaa_tides

NOAA Tides & Currents

Water levels, tides, currents

us_usgs_earthquake

USGS Earthquakes

Real-time and historical seismic events

Biodiversity / Space / Physics

Plugin

Source

Description

cern_opendata

CERN Open Data

Particle physics datasets and software

global_gbif

GBIF

Global biodiversity occurrence records

global_inaturalist

iNaturalist

Citizen-science species observations

global_opensky

OpenSky Network

Live ADS-B flight tracking

us_nasa

NASA

APOD, Near Earth Objects, Mars rover photos

Geo / Mapping / Knowledge

Plugin

Source

Description

global_mcp_registry

MCP Server Registry

Official MCP server registry — search and list published MCP servers

global_osm_nominatim

OSM Nominatim

Geocoding / reverse-geocoding (1 req/sec)

global_overpass

OSM Overpass

Query OpenStreetMap with Overpass QL

global_rest_countries

REST Countries

Country reference data — borders, capitals, currencies, languages, populations

global_wikidata

Wikidata

Structured knowledge graph + SPARQL

global_wikipedia

Wikipedia

Article summaries, related, page views

us_arcgis_item

ArcGIS REST API

Fetch public ArcGIS item metadata by ID — layers, maps, services, files

us_census_geocoder

US Census Geocoder

Address ⇄ coordinates ⇄ geographies

us_nc_onemap

NC OneMap

NC's authoritative GIS clearinghouse via ArcGIS REST — statewide geographic layers

Agriculture / Trade

Plugin

Source

Description

global_un_comtrade

UN Comtrade

International merchandise and services trade statistics

Security / Vulnerability

Plugin

Source

Description

eu_euvd

ENISA EUVD

Latest, exploited, critical, and filtered EU vulnerability search

global_circl_cve

CIRCL CVE Search

Recent CVEs, CVE details, and vendor/product browsing

global_crtsh

crt.sh

Certificate transparency search for domains and certificates

global_epss

FIRST.org EPSS

Exploit prediction scores and percentile ranks for CVEs

global_nvd_cve

NVD CVE Database

NIST CVE records, filters, and change history

global_opensanctions

OpenSanctions

Sanctions, PEP, debarment, and related risk datasets

global_osv_dev

OSV.dev

Open source vulnerability advisories across ecosystems

global_pwned_passwords

Pwned Passwords

Anonymous breached-password SHA-1 prefix lookups

global_ssllabs

SSL Labs

Public TLS configuration and endpoint analysis

us_cisa_kev

CISA KEV

Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog with remediation deadlines

Transit / Aviation

Plugin

Source

Description

ch_sbb

Swiss Federal Railways

Swiss train disruptions and service data

de_db

Deutsche Bahn

German railway open data

nl_ndov

NDOV Loket

Dutch public transport data

us_faa_nasstatus

FAA NAS Status

US airspace status, delays, ground stops (XML)

us_noaa_awc

NOAA Aviation Weather

METAR, TAF, and station weather data

Scholarly Literature

Plugin

Source

Description

global_arxiv

arXiv

Preprint metadata (Atom XML)

global_crossref

Crossref

DOI metadata, citations, journals

global_doaj

DOAJ

Open-access journal and article search

global_europepmc

Europe PMC

Biomedical literature + fulltext XML

global_openalex

OpenAlex

Open scholarly metadata

Culture / Books

Plugin

Source

Description

global_met_museum

Met Museum

Met Museum Open Access (CC0)

global_open_library

Open Library

Books, authors, works (Internet Archive)

global_unesco_heritage

UNESCO World Heritage Sites

Natural, cultural & mixed World Heritage Sites

News / Media

Plugin

Source

Description

global_gdelt

GDELT 2.0

Global news, event, and tone monitoring across 100+ languages

Networking / Internet

Plugin

Source

Description

global_bgpview

BGPView

BGP routing data — ASN info, prefixes, peers (key-less)

global_ripe_stat

RIPE NCC RIPEstat

Production-grade BGP data (key-less)

Legal

Plugin

Source

Description

nl_rechtspraak

Dutch Rechtspraak

Dutch court rulings and case law (ECLI)

uk_legislation

UK legislation.gov.uk

UK Acts, statutory instruments (XML/Atom)

us_courtlistener

CourtListener

US court opinions, dockets, judges (Free Law Project)

us_federal_register

US Federal Register

Daily rules, notices, executive orders

Optional environment variables

A few bundled plugins accept optional API keys for higher rate limits. Set these in your shell or in the Claude Desktop server config's env block:

Variable

Plugin

Purpose

COURTLISTENER_API_TOKEN

us_courtlistener

Anonymous access works at low volumes

NVD_API_KEY

global_nvd_cve

Raises NVD API rate limits

META_DATA_MCP_CONTACT

all

Your email, used in User-Agent for polite-pool APIs (Crossref, OpenAlex, OSM, SEC EDGAR). Defaults to meta-data-mcp@example.org.

OPENAQ_API_KEY

global_openaq

Enables authenticated OpenAQ API access

OPENSANCTIONS_API_KEY

global_opensanctions

Enables authenticated OpenSanctions API access

UN_COMTRADE_API_KEY

global_un_comtrade

Enables higher-tier UN Comtrade API access

Server runtime flags

Variable

Purpose

META_DATA_MCP_PRELOAD

Comma-separated plugin ids to activate at startup, or * for all. Default unset = discovery-only (~13 meta tools).

META_DATA_MCP_AUTH_TOKEN

When set on the SSE transport, requires Authorization: Bearer <token> on /sse and /messages.

META_DATA_MCP_OAUTH_ISSUER

Enable OAuth 2.0 Authorization Code + PKCE. Set to the server's public base URL (e.g. http://localhost:8000). Mounts /.well-known/oauth-authorization-server, /register, /authorize, /token, /revoke, and a consent page at /oauth/consent. Coexists with META_DATA_MCP_AUTH_TOKEN — both auth methods remain valid simultaneously.

META_DATA_MCP_PROVENANCE

Truthy (1, true, yes, on) enables a meta-data-mcp/provenance entry on every tool-call result's first content block's _meta, carrying sha256 and timestamp (ISO 8601 UTC, ms precision). The digest covers the canonical (tool, arguments, content) envelope — content blocks dumped via model_dump(mode="json", by_alias=True, exclude_none=True) with _meta stripped, JSON-serialized with sort_keys=True, separators=(",",":"), ensure_ascii=True. Binding tool name + arguments into the hash means audit logs can distinguish "tool A returned X" from "tool B returned X". Default off — opt in when you need tamper-evidence. See meta_data_mcp/provenance.py module docstring for the verbatim receiver recipe.

Transports

run defaults to SSE (HTTP, port 8000) so you can connect from the MCP Inspector or remote clients. For Claude Desktop (which the setup command targets), the spawned process uses stdio:

uv run meta-data-mcp run                                  # SSE on 127.0.0.1:8000
uv run meta-data-mcp run --transport stdio                # stdio
uv run meta-data-mcp run --host 0.0.0.0 --port 3001       # SSE bound to all interfaces

Roadmap

Shipped

  • Hierarchical discovery (v2.0): opendata.providers.find with ranked scoring replaces the originally-planned browse/list tools.

  • Agent-driven generation (v2.1): opendata.plugins.draft + opendata.plugins.create let the model close coverage gaps autonomously. Hardened in v2.1.1 with input allowlists, path containment, and a post-generation AST validator (14 RCE/path-traversal/bypass paths closed).

  • Self-hosted SSE deployment (v2.1): bearer-auth-protected, systemd-managed, reverse-proxied.

  • Multi-language SDK (v2.2): Python embedded client (meta_data_mcp.sdk) and TypeScript/Node client (@meta-data-mcp/sdk) for discovery over MCP SSE.

  • OAuth 2.0 (v2.3): Authorization Code + PKCE + Dynamic Client Registration. Works with Claude.ai (StreamableHTTP) and MCP Inspector. /.well-known/oauth-authorization-server, /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource, and /.well-known/openid-configuration all served.

  • MCP registry provider (v2.3.4): mcp.registry.search and mcp.registry.list — discover other MCP servers from within meta-data-mcp. Listed on the official MCP registry and Smithery.

Still ahead

  • Expand provider coverage beyond the current 83.

Credits

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

This server cannot be installed

A
license - permissive license
-
quality - not tested
B
maintenance

How are these scores calculated?

Maintenance

–Maintainers
–Response time
0dRelease cycle
26Releases (12mo)

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