nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server

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Overview

Vehicle safety data from NHTSA: recalls, consumer complaints, NCAP crash ratings, defect investigations, and VIN decoding. Get a full safety picture for any make, model, and year in one call, or decode a VIN.

Tools

Tool	Description
nhtsa_get_vehicle_safety	Comprehensive safety profile combining crash test ratings, recalls, and complaint summary with per-section availability status.
nhtsa_search_recalls	Search recall campaigns by vehicle or campaign number with optional date filtering.
nhtsa_search_complaints	Consumer safety complaints with component breakdown and severity stats.
nhtsa_get_safety_ratings	NCAP crash test ratings and ADAS feature availability.
nhtsa_decode_vin	Decode VINs for make, model, year, engine, safety equipment (single or batch up to 50).
nhtsa_search_investigations	Search NHTSA defect investigations (PE, EA, DP, RQ, AQ, and more) with cached index.
nhtsa_lookup_vehicles	Look up valid makes, models, vehicle types, and manufacturer details from VPIC.

Capability reference

nhtsa_get_vehicle_safety _tool

• Combines NCAP crash test ratings, recall history, and complaint summary in a single response
• Frontal crash, side crash, and rollover ratings per vehicle variant
• Recall consequence text plus the do-not-drive, park-outside, and over-the-air-update advisories
• Complaint breakdown by component with crash, fire, injury, and death counts
• Returns sectionStatus (available/partial/unavailable per section) plus warnings so a partial NHTSA outage is not mistaken for a clean record

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nhtsa_search_recalls _tool

• Look up by make/model/year or by specific NHTSA campaign number — the two are mutually exclusive
• Campaign lookups return every make/model the campaign covers, plus the ODI investigation that preceded it
• Optional inclusive dateRange bounds (after/before, calendar-valid YYYY-MM-DD) apply in both modes; blank bounds are unset
• Includes do-not-drive advisories, park-outside warnings, and OTA update availability

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nhtsa_search_complaints _tool

• Component breakdown covers every matching complaint regardless of pagination; up to 50 complaint narratives per page (default 20), offset pagination, sorted by filing date descending
• Optional component filter matches within comma-separated component lists (e.g., "ENGINE", "AIR BAGS")
• Every component line includes crash, fire, injury, and death totals, including zeros; individual complaints preserve fields NHTSA actually reported
• An incident date NHTSA reported that the complaint's own filing date or model year rules out is disclosed as unreliableIncidentDate rather than served as the incident date

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nhtsa_get_safety_ratings _tool

• Accepts either make + model + modelYear, or a follow-up vehicleId from an earlier result; combining the modes is rejected
• Frontal crash, side crash (barrier + pole), and rollover ratings, plus ESC/forward-collision/lane-departure ADAS availability
• Per-record complaint, recall, and investigation counts are variant-scoped — not vehicle-level totals
• NCAP coverage starts at 1990, most complete for 2011+ model years

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nhtsa_decode_vin _tool

• Single VIN or batch of up to 50; partial VINs accepted using * for unknown positions; any blank entry rejects the whole batch before decoding
• Optional modelYear helps disambiguate pre-1980 or partial VINs
• Preserves sparse VPIC fields instead of filling missing data with placeholders
• Every result carries VPIC's own errorCode/errorText decode-quality signal, including the clean "0" case

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nhtsa_search_investigations _tool

• Investigation types: Preliminary Evaluations (PE), Engineering Analyses (EA), Defect Petitions (DP), Recall Queries (RQ), Audit Queries (AQ), and additional ODI codes (SQ, EQ, RP, and others)
• Free-text search across investigation IDs, subjects, and summaries, plus structured make, model, and component filters — all ANDed
• Inclusive openDateRange and closeDateRange bounds (after/before, calendar-valid YYYY-MM-DD) filter before counting and pagination; active bounds exclude records without the corresponding usable date
• nhtsaId fetches one investigation by its exact ID, mutually exclusive with the other filters — the reverse of the recall link, closing the campaign-to-investigation round trip
• Sourced from NHTSA's ODI bulk file (FLAT_INV.zip) — concurrent cold queries share one streaming load with a two-minute deadline. Cancelling one query leaves other callers running; successful loads remain cached for 24 hours from completion
• Up to 25 investigations per page (default 20), offset pagination

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nhtsa_lookup_vehicles _tool

• Four operations: makes, models, vehicle_types, manufacturer — partial match supported on make/manufacturer names
• models can be filtered by year; models and vehicle_types both require make
• Each operation rejects inactive filters: makes accepts none, models accepts make/modelYear, vehicle_types accepts make, and manufacturer accepts manufacturer. Optional blank strings are unset; operation-required make/manufacturer names must be nonblank
• Up to 200 results per page (default 100), offset pagination
• manufacturer lookups stop at a 500-record ceiling and disclose truncated when more may exist — VPIC publishes no match total

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.

NHTSA-specific:

• Type-safe client wrapping four NHTSA JSON APIs with retry logic and sparse-field normalization, plus a streaming parser for the ODI investigations bulk file
• Investigation index caching (24h TTL) for fast repeated queries
• No API key required — all NHTSA APIs are public

Agent-friendly output:

• Provenance: every tool echoes effectiveQuery in its enrichment block, so callers can verify exactly what was searched
• Graceful partial failure: nhtsa_get_vehicle_safety returns sectionStatus per section plus warnings, so a partial NHTSA outage isn't mistaken for a clean safety record
• Discriminated outputs: unreliableIncidentDate (complaints), VIN decode errorCode/errorText, and manufacturer-lookup truncated disclose data-quality limits rather than silently omitting or fabricating values

Getting started

Public Hosted Instance

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

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

Self-Hosted / Local

Add the following to your MCP client configuration file:

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

Or with npx (no Bun required):

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

Or with Docker:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "docker",
      "args": ["run", "-i", "--rm", "-e", "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE=stdio", "ghcr.io/cyanheads/nhtsa-vehicle-safety-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 >= 24.0.0)

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/cyanheads/nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server.git

2. Navigate into the directory:

cd nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server

3. Install dependencies:

bun install

4. Configure environment (optional):

cp .env.example .env
# edit .env to override transport, auth, or storage defaults — no API key required

Configuration

No API keys required — all NHTSA APIs are public.

Variable	Description	Default
MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE	Transport: stdio or http.	stdio
MCP_HTTP_HOST	HTTP server host.	127.0.0.1
MCP_HTTP_PORT	HTTP server port.	3010
MCP_HTTP_ENDPOINT_PATH	HTTP endpoint path.	/mcp
MCP_AUTH_MODE	Auth mode: none, jwt, or oauth.	none
MCP_SESSION_MODE	HTTP session posture: auto, stateful, or stateless. The server declares stateless in code — it keeps no per-session state — and this variable overrides that.	stateless
MCP_LOG_LEVEL	Log level (RFC 5424).	info
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
OTEL_ENABLED	Enable OpenTelemetry instrumentation (spans, metrics, completion logs).	false

See .env.example for the full list of optional overrides.

Running the server

Local development

• Build and run:

  # 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
  bun run lint:mcp   # Validate MCP definitions against spec
  

Docker

docker build -t nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server .
docker run --rm -p 3010:3010 nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server

The Dockerfile defaults to HTTP transport and logs to /var/log/nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server; it restates the stateless session mode the server already declares. 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 NHTSA service.
src/mcp-server/tools/definitions/	Tool definitions (*.tool.ts).
src/services/nhtsa/	NHTSA API client, ODI bulk-file parser, and field normalization.
tests/	Unit and integration tests mirroring src/.

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 request-scoped logging
• One tool per file, nhtsa_ prefix for every tool name, registered in createApp()
• Validate raw NHTSA responses → normalize to domain types → return the output schema; never fabricate a field NHTSA didn't provide

Data sources

All data comes from NHTSA's public APIs and bulk files:

• Recalls API — api.nhtsa.gov/recalls
• Complaints API — api.nhtsa.gov/complaints
• Safety Ratings API — api.nhtsa.gov/SafetyRatings
• Investigations bulk file — static.nhtsa.gov/odi/ffdd/inv/FLAT_INV.zip
• VPIC API — vpic.nhtsa.dot.gov/api/vehicles

Contributing

Issues are welcome. Run checks and tests before submitting:

bun run devcheck
bun run test

License

Apache-2.0 — see LICENSE for details.