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neon-mcp

neon-mcp is a Model Context Protocol server for the NEON Data API. It lets AI agents and coding assistants discover NEON data products, sites and locations, check data availability by site and month, browse releases, taxonomy and prototype datasets, and — with a NEON API token — list and fetch data files, all through compact, size-bounded tool results instead of the API's multi-megabyte raw payloads.

The server implements the MCP 2026-07-28 specification (stateless core) on the Python mcp 2.x SDK. It speaks stdio for local clients such as Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex CLI and OpenCode, and stateless Streamable HTTP at /mcp when hosted. It is developed by idss-mesa at the University of New Mexico and released under the MIT license.

Install in one minute

uv tool install git+https://github.com/idss-mesa/neon-mcp
claude mcp add neon -s user -- neon-mcp --transport stdio

Then ask your agent to call neon_ping; a successful reply confirms the server is running and can reach the NEON API.

Data downloads need a NEON API token

Product, site, location, release, taxonomy and prototype-dataset discovery work anonymously. Since NEON Data API 0.11.0 (June 2026) the data-file, data-query and sample endpoints require an API token; see NEON API token to obtain one and pass it to neon-mcp.

Documentation

This site is an Open Knowledge Format (OKF) v0.2 knowledge bundle: every page carries YAML frontmatter with type, provenance and lifecycle fields, and the whole corpus is available to agents at llms.txt and llms-full.txt.

  • Getting started - Install neon-mcp, connect an MCP client, add your NEON API token and tune the configuration.
  • Tools - The 20 tools by family, with the generated tool reference, worked examples, pitfalls and error codes.
  • MCP protocol - How neon-mcp implements the MCP 2026-07-28 stateless core and its stdio and Streamable HTTP transports.
  • Deploy - Run neon-mcp as a hosted, stateless HTTP service behind TLS, and the security model operators rely on.
  • Develop - Architecture, adding a tool, the hermetic test suite, and how to contribute and release.
  • About - How agents should consume this site, how to cite NEON data, licenses, and the change log.

Where to get help