# openfoodfacts-mcp-server [Health: Active]
**Category:** 💻 Developer Tools
**Repository:** https://github.com/cyanheads/openfoodfacts-mcp-server
**GitHub Stars:** 1
**Views:** 0
**Installs:** 0
**Upvotes:** 0
**Directory Page:** https://allmcps.com/mcp/openfoodfacts-mcp-server
## Description
Barcode lookup, nutrition search, and product comparison for 3M+ crowd-sourced food products.
## Claude Desktop Quick Installation
Install path detected from listing signals. Uses `bunx` (confidence: high):
```json
"mcpServers": {
"openfoodfacts-mcp-server": {
"command": "bunx",
"args": ["@cyanheads/openfoodfacts-mcp-server@latest"]
}
}
```
## Documentation & README
@cyanheads/openfoodfacts-mcp-server
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.
4 Tools
[](./CHANGELOG.md) [](./LICENSE) [](https://github.com/users/cyanheads/packages/container/package/openfoodfacts-mcp-server) [](https://modelcontextprotocol.io/) [](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@cyanheads/openfoodfacts-mcp-server) [](https://www.typescriptlang.org/) [](https://bun.sh/)
[](https://github.com/cyanheads/openfoodfacts-mcp-server/releases/latest/download/openfoodfacts-mcp-server.mcpb) [](https://cursor.com/en/install-mcp?name=openfoodfacts-mcp-server&config=eyJjb21tYW5kIjoibnB4IiwiYXJncyI6WyIteSIsIkBjeWFuaGVhZHMvb3BlbmZvb2RmYWN0cy1tY3Atc2VydmVyIl19) [](https://vscode.dev/redirect?url=vscode:mcp/install?%7B%22name%22%3A%22openfoodfacts-mcp-server%22%2C%22command%22%3A%22npx%22%2C%22args%22%3A%5B%22-y%22%2C%22%40cyanheads%2Fopenfoodfacts-mcp-server%22%5D%7D)
[](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@cyanheads/mcp-ts-core)
**Public Hosted Server:** [https://openfoodfacts.caseyjhand.com/mcp](https://openfoodfacts.caseyjhand.com/mcp)
---
## Tools
Four tools for working with [Open Food Facts](https://world.openfoodfacts.org/) — 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, allergen, additive, 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` | Resolve a human term to the canonical tag ID (categories, labels, allergens, additives, countries, NOVA groups, Nutri-Score grades) that `off_search_products` filters on, against the live Open Food Facts taxonomy. |
### `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, every nutrient Open Food Facts holds per 100g and per serving, the serving size those per-serving figures are measured against, 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
- A barcode no contributor has recorded raises the `not_found` error carrying a recovery hint — it is never returned as an empty result
---
### `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`, `allergens_tag`, `additives_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`). `brands_tag` takes a brand slug and matches it exactly; open-ended brand wording belongs in `query`
- `additives_tag` filters only on searches with no text query — the text backend does not index additives, so pairing the two is rejected up front rather than returning an empty result set that looks like "no such product"
- Pagination via `page` (1-based) and `page_size` (1–50, default 20)
- `total` is exact on tag-only searches. Text searches stop counting at 10,000 matches, and when that ceiling is hit the response says so with `total_is_lower_bound: true` and renders the count as `10000+` — add filters for an exact figure
- Searches carrying a text query serve only the first 10,000 results — a deeper `page * page_size` is rejected up front with the highest reachable page, not sent and retried. Tag-only searches publish no window, but deep pages are refused unpredictably, so narrowing the filters beats paging far in
- 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 limited to ~10 requests/min by this server's own client-side budget, kept well inside what Open Food Facts asks of clients
---
### `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)
- `failed` list identifies barcodes whose fetch failed, with the per-barcode reason — kept separate from `not_found`, which claims the opposite. A failed barcode never blocks the rows that resolved
---
### `off_browse_taxonomy`
Resolve a human term to the canonical Open Food Facts tag ID before building `off_search_products` filters.
- Facets: `categories`, `labels`, `allergens`, `additives`, `countries`, `nova_groups`, `nutrition_grades`
- With a `search` term, the five open facets resolve against the live Open Food Facts taxonomy — tens of thousands of category tags, not a fixed local list. Matching is case-insensitive substring against tag ID or display name (e.g., `"gluten"` → `en:no-gluten`, `en:gluten-free`)
- Upstream tags are often plural (`"kombucha"` → `en:kombuchas`) — pass the returned `id` through unchanged rather than constructing one
- `nova_groups` and `nutrition_grades` are closed vocabularies answered offline and returned complete. Their IDs are bare (`1`–`4`, `a`–`e`), matching what `off_search_products` accepts
- Live results are merged behind an in-process sample that also serves offline operation. If Open Food Facts is unreachable or the taxonomy budget is spent, the tool answers from that sample and says so rather than failing — an empty result is never presented as an authoritative "no such tag"
- Omitting `search` lists only the offline sample. The upstream taxonomy endpoint suggests against a term and cannot enumerate a facet, so an unfiltered call is not a view of the full vocabulary and reports no facet total
- `limit` controls results returned (1–100, default 20). There is no offset or page input — the upstream endpoint offers no cursor, so narrow the term instead
- Taxonomy lookups carry their own ~10 requests/min client-side budget, separate from the search budget
---
## Features
Built on [`@cyanheads/mcp-ts-core`](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@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 (~15/min), search (~10/min), taxonomy resolution (~10/min). The product and search defaults are the per-IP ceilings Open Food Facts publishes; lower them on a shared outbound IP. A local refusal says so — it never reports itself as an Open Food Facts rate limit
- Automatic retry (3 attempts, 500ms base) for transient failures only — 5xx, timeouts, and 429 (honoring `Retry-After`), with HTML error page detection for 503 during high load. A 4xx is never retried; the upstream's own explanation is surfaced instead
- Nutriments normalized from raw hyphenated keys (`energy-kcal_100g`) to underscore form — the `_100g` and `_serving` variants of every nutrient on the record, with the macros as named fields and the rest in an open map that carries each nutrient's own unit (micronutrients are reported in grams, so calcium `0.071` is 71 mg)
- Live tag resolution for `off_browse_taxonomy` against the Open Food Facts taxonomy, merged behind a small in-process sample that covers offline operation and is authoritative for E-number lookups, which the upstream suggester answers poorly
Agent-friendly output:
- Per-serving nutrition always carries its denominator — `serving_size` as printed plus the parsed `serving_quantity`/`serving_quantity_unit`, and an explicit note when Open Food Facts has recorded none
- 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 — and a barcode whose fetch failed lands in `failed` instead, so a transport error is never reported as "no contributor record"
- Every failure carries a declared `reason` and a recovery hint on both client surfaces — timeouts, upstream outages, upstream rejections, and rate limits each resolve to their own error code and their own next step
## 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:
```sh
MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE=http MCP_HTTP_PORT=3010 bun run start:http
# Server listens at http://localhost:3010/mcp
```
### Prerequisites
- [Bun v1.3.0](https://bun.sh/) 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
1. **Clone the repository:**
```sh
git clone https://github.com/cyanheads/openfoodfacts-mcp-server.git
```
2. **Navigate into the directory:**
```sh
cd openfoodfacts-mcp-server
```
3. **Install dependencies:**
```sh
bun install
```
4. **Configure environment:**
```sh
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). Matches the 15 req/min/IP Open Food Facts documents for product reads. | `15` |
| `OFF_RATE_LIMIT_SEARCH` | Search rate limit (requests/min). | `10` |
| `OFF_RATE_LIMIT_TAXONOMY` | Taxonomy resolution rate limit (requests/min). A spent budget falls back to the offline sample rather than failing. | `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). | `/logs` |
| `OTEL_ENABLED` | Enable [OpenTelemetry instrumentation](https://github.com/cyanheads/mcp-ts-core/tree/main/docs/telemetry). | `false` |
See [`.env.example`](https://github.com/cyanheads/openfoodfacts-mcp-server/blob/HEAD/.env.example) for the full list of optional overrides.
> **Attribution:** Open Food Facts data is released under the [Open Database License (ODbL) 1.0](https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1.0/). Downstream use must cite [Open Food Facts](https://world.openfoodfacts.org/).
## Running the server
### Local development
- **Build and run:**
```sh
# One-time build
bun run rebuild
# Run the built server
bun run start:stdio
# or
bun run start:http
```
- **Run checks and tests:**
```sh
bun run devcheck # Lint, format, typecheck, security
bun run test # Vitest test suite
bun run lint:mcp # Validate MCP definitions against spec
```
### Docker
```sh
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` | Tag vocabulary service for `off_browse_taxonomy` — live resolution, offline sample, merge and fallback policy. |
| `tests/` | Unit and integration tests mirroring `src/`. |
## Development guide
See [`CLAUDE.md`](https://github.com/cyanheads/openfoodfacts-mcp-server/blob/HEAD/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:
```sh
bun run devcheck
bun run test
```
## License
Apache-2.0 — see [LICENSE](https://github.com/cyanheads/openfoodfacts-mcp-server/blob/HEAD/LICENSE) for details.