nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server

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  <h1>@cyanheads/nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server</h1>
  <p><b>Decode VINs, search recalls, complaints, crash ratings, and investigations via MCP. STDIO or Streamable HTTP.</b>
  <div>7 Tools</div>
  </p>
</div>

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[![Install in Claude Desktop](https://img.shields.io/badge/Install_in-Claude_Desktop-D97757?style=for-the-badge&logo=anthropic&logoColor=white)](https://github.com/cyanheads/nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server/releases/latest/download/nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server.mcpb) [![Install in Cursor](https://cursor.com/deeplink/mcp-install-dark.svg)](https://cursor.com/en/install-mcp?name=nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server&config=eyJjb21tYW5kIjoibnB4IiwiYXJncyI6WyIteSIsIkBjeWFuaGVhZHMvbmh0c2EtdmVoaWNsZS1zYWZldHktbWNwLXNlcnZlciJdfQ==) [![Install in VS Code](https://img.shields.io/badge/VS_Code-Install_Server-0098FF?style=for-the-badge&logo=visualstudiocode&logoColor=white)](https://vscode.dev/redirect?url=vscode:mcp/install?%7B%22name%22%3A%22nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server%22%2C%22command%22%3A%22npx%22%2C%22args%22%3A%5B%22-y%22%2C%22%40cyanheads/nhtsa-vehicle-safety-mcp-server%22%5D%7D)

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**Public Hosted Server:** [https://nhtsa.caseyjhand.com/mcp](https://nhtsa.caseyjhand.com/mcp)

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---

## Overview

Vehicle safety data from NHTSA — recall campaigns, consumer complaints, NCAP crash ratings, defect investigations, and VIN decoding. Search, decode, and cross-reference across five NHTSA data sources from any MCP client. Runs as a stdio process, a local Streamable HTTP server, or the public hosted endpoint above.

### 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` <sub>tool</sub>

- 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

---

### `nhtsa_search_recalls` <sub>tool</sub>

- 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 date range filtering (ISO 8601), applied locally
- Includes do-not-drive advisories, park-outside warnings, and OTA update availability

---

### `nhtsa_search_complaints` <sub>tool</sub>

- 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")
- Crash, fire, injury, and death counts on both the breakdown and each complaint
- 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

---

### `nhtsa_get_safety_ratings` <sub>tool</sub>

- Accepts either make + model + modelYear, or a follow-up `vehicleId` from an earlier result
- 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

---

### `nhtsa_decode_vin` <sub>tool</sub>

- Single VIN or batch of up to 50; partial VINs accepted using `*` for unknown positions
- 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

---

### `nhtsa_search_investigations` <sub>tool</sub>

- 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
- `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`) — the first query downloads and parses it (~10s), subsequent queries use the cached index (24h TTL, matching the file's daily refresh)
- Up to 25 investigations per page (default 20), offset pagination

---

### `nhtsa_lookup_vehicles` <sub>tool</sub>

- 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`
- 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`](https://github.com/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:

```json
{
  "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:

```json
{
  "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):

```json
{
  "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:

```json
{
  "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:

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

### Prerequisites

- [B