io.github.cyanheads/openfoodfacts-mcp-server

Official

by cyanheads · TypeScript

Barcode lookup, nutrition search, and product comparison for 3M+ crowd-sourced food products.

Search 3M+ food products by barcode, nutrition, and ingredients.

barcode lookupnutrition searchfood databaseproduct comparisoningredientsallergensopenfoodfacts

Topics

ai-agentsai-toolsbarcodecyanheadsfoodmcpmcp-servermodel-context-protocolnutritionopenfoodfactstypescript

README.md13 KBView on GitHub

<div align="center"> <h1>@cyanheads/openfoodfacts-mcp-server</h1> <p><b>Look up food products by barcode, search by ingredient or nutrition filter, compare products side-by-side, and browse the canonical tag vocabulary via MCP. STDIO or Streamable HTTP.</b> <div>4 Tools</div> </p> </div> <div align="center">

</div> <div align="center">

Public Hosted Server: https://openfoodfacts.caseyjhand.com/mcp

</div>

Tools

Four tools for working with Open Food Facts — a free, crowd-sourced database of 3M+ packaged food products:

Tool	Description
`off_get_product`	Fetch a packaged food product by barcode. Returns name, brand, quantity, ingredients, allergens, additives, Nutri-Score, NOVA group, Green-Score, nutrition per 100g/serving, categories, labels, and data completeness.
`off_search_products`	Search by text query and/or structured tag filters (category, brand, label, Nutri-Score grade, NOVA group, country). Returns summary rows with barcodes for follow-up lookups.
`off_compare_products`	Side-by-side nutrition and scoring comparison for 2–10 products by barcode. Returns a normalized table of energy, macros, salt, Nutri-Score, NOVA, and Green-Score.
`off_browse_taxonomy`	Browse and search the canonical tag vocabulary (categories, labels, allergens, additives, countries, NOVA groups, Nutri-Score grades) for use as filter values in `off_search_products`.

`off_get_product`

Fetch a packaged food product by barcode (EAN-13 or UPC).

Accepts 8–14 digit barcodes (EAN-13, EAN-8, UPC-A, UPC-E)
Returns ingredients (raw text and parsed list with percent estimates, vegan/vegetarian flags), all 14 major allergens as tag IDs, E-number additives, Nutri-Score a–e, NOVA 1–4, Green-Score/Eco-Score, full nutriments per 100g and per serving, categories/labels/packaging/origins as canonical tag IDs, front image URL, and data completeness score (0–1)
Optional fields parameter restricts the response to a subset (e.g., scores only, or nutrition only)
Open Food Facts is crowd-sourced — a missing field means "not yet entered by contributors," not that the attribute is absent from the actual product
found: false means no contributor has recorded this barcode yet — not a product defect

`off_search_products`

Search Open Food Facts by text and/or structured tag filters.

Full-text search across product names, brands, and ingredients
Structured filters: categories_tag, brands_tag, labels_tag, nutrition_grade (a–e), nova_group (1–4), countries_tag
Text query and tag filters combine — a query with filters returns products that match the text and satisfy every filter (e.g., query: "dark chocolate" + labels_tag: en:organic + countries_tag: en:france)
All filter values are canonical tag IDs — use off_browse_taxonomy to resolve human terms (e.g., "organic" → en:organic)
Pagination via page (1-based) and page_size (1–50, default 20); response includes total count for computing total pages
Returns summary rows (barcode, name, brand, Nutri-Score, NOVA, categories) — use off_get_product for full label data
Result counts reflect contributed products, not total products on the market
Search rate-limited to ~10 requests/min by the Open Food Facts API

`off_compare_products`

Side-by-side nutrition and scoring comparison for 2–10 barcodes.

Accepts 2–10 barcodes, compared in the order provided
Returns a normalized comparison table: energy (kcal/100g), fat, saturated fat, sugars, salt, protein, fiber, Nutri-Score, NOVA group, and Green-Score
Missing nutrition data is preserved as null — comparisons are not imputed or estimated
not_found list identifies barcodes with no contributor record (partial results are not an error)

`off_browse_taxonomy`

Browse the canonical Open Food Facts tag vocabulary before building off_search_products filters.

Facets: categories, labels, allergens, additives, countries, nova_groups, nutrition_grades
Optional search parameter: case-insensitive substring match against tag ID or display name (e.g., "gluten" → en:gluten, en:no-gluten, en:no-added-gluten)
Taxonomy is served from a curated in-process vocabulary — no live network call, so lookups are instant and offline
The categories facet is broad — pass a search term to narrow it to the relevant tags
limit controls results returned (1–100, default 20)

Features

Built on @cyanheads/mcp-ts-core:

Declarative tool definitions — single file per tool, framework handles registration and validation
Unified error handling — handlers throw, framework catches, classifies, and formats
Pluggable auth: none, jwt, oauth
Swappable storage backends: in-memory, filesystem, Supabase, Cloudflare KV/R2/D1
Structured logging with optional OpenTelemetry tracing
STDIO and Streamable HTTP transports

Open Food Facts-specific:

No API key required — the identifying User-Agent header (required by OFF terms) is baked into the service layer
Token-bucket rate limiting per endpoint class: product reads (~100/min), search (~10/min)
Automatic retry (3 attempts, 500ms base) with HTML error page detection for 503 during high load
Nutriments normalized from raw hyphenated keys (energy-kcal_100g) to underscore form — only the _100g and _serving variants are returned
Embedded tag taxonomy for off_browse_taxonomy — curated 200+ category subset, full allergen/label/additive vocabularies

Agent-friendly output:

found field on every product response — explicit false when a barcode has no contributor record, not a thrown error
Missing fields signal incomplete crowd-sourced data, not product attribute absence — surfaced in descriptions and format output
Computed scores (Nutri-Score, NOVA, Green-Score) returned as-is with regional caveat notes — not interpreted or normalized to health claims
not_found list in off_compare_products allows partial batch comparisons without request failure

Getting started

Public Hosted Instance

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

json

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

Self-Hosted / Local

No API key is required. Add the following to your MCP client configuration file.

json

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

Or with npx (no Bun required):

json

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

Or with Docker:

json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "openfoodfacts-mcp-server": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run", "-i", "--rm",
        "-e", "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE=stdio",
        "ghcr.io/cyanheads/openfoodfacts-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 v1.3.0 or higher (or Node.js v24+).
No API key needed. The server sends an identifying User-Agent to comply with Open Food Facts' terms of service — this is baked in and requires no configuration.

Installation

Clone the repository:

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

Navigate into the directory:

cd openfoodfacts-mcp-server

Install dependencies:

bun install

Configure environment:

cp .env.example .env
# edit .env if you need to override rate limits or the base URL

Configuration

All configuration is validated at startup via Zod schemas in src/config/server-config.ts.

Variable	Description	Default
`OFF_BASE_URL`	Open Food Facts API base URL. Override for local testing against a mock server.	`https://world.openfoodfacts.org`
`OFF_RATE_LIMIT_PRODUCT`	Product read rate limit (requests/min).	`100`
`OFF_RATE_LIMIT_SEARCH`	Search rate limit (requests/min).	`10`
`MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE`	Transport: `stdio` or `http`.	`stdio`
`MCP_HTTP_PORT`	HTTP server port.	`3010`
`MCP_AUTH_MODE`	Auth mode: `none`, `jwt`, or `oauth`.	`none`
`MCP_LOG_LEVEL`	Log level (`debug`, `info`, `warning`, `error`).	`info`
`LOGS_DIR`	Log file directory (Node.js only).	`<project-root>/logs`
`OTEL_ENABLED`	Enable OpenTelemetry instrumentation.	`false`

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

Attribution: Open Food Facts data is released under the Open Database License (ODbL) 1.0. Downstream use must cite Open Food Facts.

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 openfoodfacts-mcp-server .
docker run --rm -p 3010:3010 openfoodfacts-mcp-server

The Dockerfile defaults to HTTP transport, stateless session mode, and logs to /var/log/openfoodfacts-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 services.
`src/config`	Server-specific environment variable parsing and validation with Zod.
`src/mcp-server/tools`	Tool definitions (`*.tool.ts`).
`src/services/openfoodfacts`	Open Food Facts API client — HTTP, rate limiting, retry, field normalization.
`src/services/taxonomy`	Embedded tag vocabulary service for `off_browse_taxonomy`.
`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, ctx.state for tenant-scoped storage
Register new tools via the barrel in src/mcp-server/tools/definitions/index.ts
Wrap external API calls: validate raw → normalize to domain type → return output schema; never fabricate missing fields

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Run checks and tests before submitting:

bun run devcheck
bun run test

License

Apache-2.0 — see LICENSE for details.

Install

Configuration

Environment variables

OFF_BASE_URLdefault https://world.openfoodfacts.org

Open Food Facts API base URL override. Useful for testing against a mock server.

OFF_RATE_LIMIT_PRODUCTdefault 100

Product read rate limit (requests/min).

OFF_RATE_LIMIT_SEARCHdefault 10

Search rate limit (requests/min).

MCP_LOG_LEVELdefault info

Sets the minimum log level for output (e.g., 'debug', 'info', 'warn').

MCP_HTTP_HOSTdefault 127.0.0.1

The hostname for the HTTP server.

MCP_HTTP_PORTdefault 3010

The port to run the HTTP server on.

MCP_HTTP_ENDPOINT_PATHdefault /mcp

The endpoint path for the MCP server.

MCP_AUTH_MODEdefault none

Authentication mode to use: 'none', 'jwt', or 'oauth'.

claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "openfoodfacts-mcp-server": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@cyanheads/openfoodfacts-mcp-server@0.1.8",
        "run",
        "start:stdio"
      ],
      "env": {
        "OFF_BASE_URL": "https://world.openfoodfacts.org",
        "OFF_RATE_LIMIT_PRODUCT": "100",
        "OFF_RATE_LIMIT_SEARCH": "10",
        "MCP_LOG_LEVEL": "info"
      }
    }
  }
}