cpsc-recalls-mcp-server

---

Overview

Consumer product recalls from the CPSC saferproducts.gov database — toys, electronics, furniture, appliances, children's products, tools, and clothing. Search recalls by product, brand, retailer, or hazard, fetch full detail for a specific recall number, or pull a recent-recalls feed for a date window.

Tools

Tool	Description
cpsc_search_recalls	Search consumer product recalls by title, product name, brand, retailer, importer, distributor, hazard, remedy, or description keyword, with optional date filtering and offset paging
cpsc_get_recall	Full detail for a single recall by recall number — hazards, remedy, products, injuries, images, and the official CPSC page
cpsc_get_recent	Fetch the most recent recalls ordered newest-first, scoped to a configurable date window

CPSC jurisdiction is consumer products only — food/drugs (FDA), motor vehicles/tires (NHTSA), boats (USCG), pesticides (EPA), and firearms (ATF) are not in this database; every response carries a jurisdiction note.

Capability reference

cpsc_search_recalls _tool

• At least one criterion, combined with AND: nine text filters of up to 500 characters each (title_search, usually the highest-signal, plus product_name, manufacturer, retailer, importer, distributor, description_search, remedy, hazard_search) and two date axes (date_start/date_end for the issue date, updated_start/updated_end for the last CPSC publish date); limit (1–200, default 20) and offset page through total_found
• Returns hazards, remedy options and instructions, products, UPCs, company names by role, images, cpsc_url, and per-recall data_quality_notes; zero matches is an empty success whose effectiveQuery echoes the criteria and whose notice names the criterion to relax. Failures: missing_criteria, invalid_date_range, upstream_rejected (not retryable), upstream_error (retryable)
• has_more is the paging signal; a page cut short by the 64,000-byte response budget carries a notice with the offset to continue from

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cpsc_get_recall _tool

• One recall_number: 5 digits for 2002–present records ("25043"), or 5 digits plus a letter a–d for 1998–2001 records ("99003a")
• Returns the complete record — nullable description (where model numbers usually live), hazards, remedy options and instructions, every product variant, UPCs, injury narrative, company names by role, country of manufacture, images, coordinated-agency recall URLs, and data_quality_notes
• Failures: not_found (resolve a number through cpsc_search_recalls or cpsc_get_recent), upstream_rejected (not retryable), upstream_error (retryable)

---

cpsc_get_recent _tool

• days look-back window (1–365, default 30) anchored to today; limit (1–100, default 20) and offset page through total_found, since narrowing days drops the oldest recalls rather than paging. Older recalls are reachable through cpsc_search_recalls date bounds
• Returns a lightweight record per recall — number, date, title, hazards, remedy types, product names, cpsc_url, data_quality_notes — for cpsc_get_recall to expand; has_more is the paging signal, and an empty window, an offset past the end, or a budget-cut page carries a notice. Failures: upstream_rejected (not retryable), upstream_error (retryable)

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.

CPSC-specific:

• Full client for the CPSC saferproducts.gov public recalls API — search, single-recall detail, and a recent-recalls feed
• Every-word matching on all nine text filters — each word in any order, case-insensitive, against the plain text the results show — applied over the complete result set before paging so total_found and has_more stay accurate; hazard_search (alias hazard) covers hazard text, product names, and remedy instructions
• Handles both modern 5-digit recall numbers and historical 1998–2001 records with letter suffixes
• Jurisdiction boundary documented in every response — flags food, vehicle, and drug recalls as out of scope before an agent misattributes them

Agent-friendly output:

• Provenance on every response — source_note, cpsc_url, and (CPSC source text) blockquote labels distinguish relayed CPSC narrative from the server's own guidance
• Plain text on both surfaces — the HTML markup and character codes CPSC stores in some records (&, <br>, stray table tags) are converted to plain text before matching and output, and content[] escapes Markdown so model and serial numbers such as 1HFVE05**K4000003 keep every character; recall pages and coordinated recalls render as links, and product images render inline with their captions; HTTP(S) addresses preserve CPSC’s URL values on both surfaces, while other schemes remain visible as text
• Pagination discriminators — total_found, offset, has_more, and truncated on every search/recent response so agents can tell when results are clipped and page with offset; each surface of a page stays within a 64,000-byte budget, and a notice gives the next offset when the budget ends a page early
• data_quality_notes on every response — gaps observed in the upstream record (missing hazard text, no product entries), derived from which fields CPSC left blank rather than any judgment call
• Jurisdiction note (cpsc_jurisdiction) on every response — lets agents route callers to the correct agency (FDA, NHTSA, USCG, EPA, ATF) when a product is out of scope

Getting started

Public Hosted Instance

A public instance is available at https://cpsc-recalls.caseyjhand.com/mcp — no installation required. It serves Streamable HTTP; each client takes its own configuration shape.

For Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http cpsc-recalls-mcp-server https://cpsc-recalls.caseyjhand.com/mcp

For Cline (cline_mcp_settings.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "cpsc-recalls-mcp-server": {
      "type": "streamableHttp",
      "url": "https://cpsc-recalls.caseyjhand.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

For Cursor (mcp.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "cpsc-recalls-mcp-server": {
      "url": "https://cpsc-recalls.caseyjhand.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Claude Desktop adds remote servers under Settings → Connectors.

Self-Hosted / Local

Add the following to your MCP client configuration file.

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

Or with npx (no Bun required):

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

Or with Docker:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "cpsc-recalls-mcp-server": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "docker",
      "args": ["run", "-i", "--rm", "-e", "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE=stdio", "ghcr.io/cyanheads/cpsc-recalls-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 (or Node.js v24+).
• No API key required — the CPSC public recalls API is freely accessible.

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

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

2. Navigate into the directory:

cd cpsc-recalls-mcp-server

3. Install dependencies:

bun install

4. Configure environment:

cp .env.example .env
# edit .env if needed — no required API keys

Configuration

All configuration is validated at startup via Zod schemas. Key environment variables:

Variable	Description	Default
MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE	Transport: stdio or http	stdio
MCP_HTTP_PORT	HTTP server port	3010
MCP_HTTP_HOST	HTTP server host	127.0.0.1
MCP_HTTP_ENDPOINT_PATH	HTTP endpoint path	/mcp
MCP_PUBLIC_URL	Public origin for TLS-terminating reverse-proxy deployments	—
MCP_SESSION_MODE	Session handling: auto, stateful, or stateless. The server declares stateless in src/index.ts; setting this overrides it.	stateless
MCP_AUTH_MODE	Authentication: none, jwt, or oauth	none
MCP_LOG_LEVEL	Log level (debug, info, warning, error)	info
LOGS_DIR	Directory for log files (Node.js only)	<project-root>/logs
LOG_TOOL_FAILURE_PAYLOADS	Log each failed tool call's arguments and result, redacted by key name and capped at LOG_TOOL_FAILURE_PAYLOAD_MAX_BYTES (default 16384). A secret inside a free-form value is not redacted.	false
STORAGE_PROVIDER_TYPE	Storage backend: in-memory, filesystem, supabase, cloudflare-kv/r2/d1	in-memory
OTEL_ENABLED	Enable OpenTelemetry	false

No server-specific API keys are required. See .env.example for the full list of 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:stdio
  # or
  bun run start:http
  

• Run checks and tests:

  bun run devcheck  # Lint, format, typecheck, security
  bun run test      # Vitest test suite
  

Docker

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

The Dockerfile defaults to HTTP transport, stateless session mode, and logs to /var/log/cpsc-recalls-mcp-server. 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 CPSC service
src/mcp-server/tools	Tool definitions (definitions/*.tool.ts) — search, get-recall, get-recent — plus response-budget.ts, the page size budget the two list tools share, and markdown-escape.ts, the escaping applied to CPSC text in content[]
src/services/cpsc-recall	CPSC recall service — API client, types, and normalize-text.ts, which converts CPSC's HTML markup and character codes to plain text

Development guide

See CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.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, ctx.state for tenant-scoped storage
• Register new tools in the createApp() arrays in src/index.ts
• Wrap external API calls: validate raw → normalize to domain type → return output schema; never fabricate missing fields

Contributing

Issues are welcome. Run checks and tests before submitting:

bun run devcheck
bun run test

License

Apache-2.0 — see LICENSE for details.