Use with AI assistants

OpenPhenology's MCP server lets an AI assistant answer questions such as “when is the monarch recorded in Franklin County?” from the published files, with the release, the limits and the credit attached to every answer.

1. Add the server

In an assistant that supports remote MCP servers, add this address as a server. It needs no key or account.

Address

https://mcp.openphenology.com

In Claude Code, for example:

Shell

claude mcp add --transport http openphenology https://mcp.openphenology.com

2. Or run it on your computer

@openphenology/mcp runs the same server on your own computer, over standard input and output. Assistants that start local servers take a command such as:

JSON

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "openphenology": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@openphenology/mcp"]
    }
  }
}

The server's source on GitHub (opens in a new tab)

What it can answer

The server has six read-only tools:

search: Species and places by name, or the species with a season in a place, as the site's search finds them.
find_county: The counties a ZIP code falls in, largest share of its land first.
get_season: When people recorded a species in a state or county: its early, middle and late weeks.
get_records: The records behind a species' result in a state or county, with links to the first of them; none for a sensitive species.
this_week: How each species is reported in a county in one week, from its Nearby labels.
get_terms: The licence, how to cite and credit the data, the disclaimer and the contact address.

What every answer carries

release: the release the facts come from.
limits: what the results do not show. Results show when people recorded a species, not when or where it occurs, and a missing result never means absence.
terms: the licence, and how to cite OpenPhenology and credit its sources.

The server asks assistants to pass the limits on, to credit the data, and to say a species was recorded or reported, never that it occurs or is absent.

ZIP codes

The hosted server takes only a ZIP code's first three digits and returns every ZIP code under them, so the assistant picks yours. A whole ZIP code never reaches OpenPhenology. Run on your computer, the server takes a whole ZIP code and reads only the published file for its first three digits. What you type into your assistant is between you and its provider.

Good to know

The server reads the same published files as everyone else and holds no data of its own. It checks for a new release at most once an hour.
No request logs or analytics are kept beyond Cloudflare's aggregate traffic figures.
Requests are rate-limited so the server stays free for everyone.
OpenPhenology is in beta: the tools may change before 1.0.0.