# shipi18n [Health: Active]

**Category:** 🌎 Translation Services  
**Repository:** https://github.com/Shipi18n/shipi18n  
**GitHub Stars:** 0  
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**Directory Page:** https://allmcps.com/mcp/shipi18n

## Description
Translation QA for locale files: keyless validators, semantic review and BYO-key translation

## Claude Desktop Quick Installation
Install path detected from listing signals. Uses `npx` (confidence: high):

```json
"mcpServers": {
  "shipi18n": {
    "command": "npx",
    "args": ["-y","@shipi18n/cli"]
  }
}
```

## Documentation

## What shipi18n MCP server does

The shipi18n MCP server gives an AI coding client access to locale-file workflows without requiring a hosted Shipi18n account. Its documented capabilities are checking, comparing, and reviewing translation files. This makes it suitable for agents working in repositories where locale changes need the same structural checks used in local development or CI.

Checks can identify issues such as missing or extra keys, broken placeholders, malformed plural forms, invalid ICU MessageFormat, duplicate JSON keys, empty strings, and untranslated values. The underlying project supports JSON, YAML, Flutter ARB, Apple `.xcstrings`, Android XML, gettext PO, and XLIFF formats, including common nested and flat locale layouts.

## How it works

The MCP package runs as the agent-facing interface to Shipi18n’s locale validation capabilities. An MCP client invokes the available operations against locale files, allowing an agent to inspect a file or a change without sending the files to Shipi18n-hosted infrastructure.

Structural validation is offline and needs no API key. Semantic review is different: it uses a user-selected LLM provider and requires the corresponding key on the user’s machine. The project describes semantic review as a way to catch meaning errors that structural checks cannot detect, such as a translation saying “save” when the source says “delete.”

## Setup and configuration

Install or configure the `@shipi18n/mcp` package through the MCP client you use. The repository specifically documents use with Claude Desktop, Cursor, and other MCP clients, but the provided material does not include a client-specific configuration snippet or startup command.

No account or Shipi18n service endpoint is required for validation. If semantic review is enabled, configure the credentials for the chosen provider locally. The broader Shipi18n tooling documents `ANTHROPIC_API_KEY` and `OPENAI_API_KEY` for semantic checks; the MCP excerpt does not state whether additional MCP-specific variables are required.

## Tools and capabilities

The shipi18n MCP server is documented as providing tools to:

- Check locale files for structural translation problems.
- Diff locale-file changes.
- Review translations, including semantic issues when a provider key is available.
- Work with the locale formats supported by the Shipi18n engine.

Validation findings can identify the exact translation problem and the expected fix. The underlying CLI can emit text, JSON, SARIF, or JUnit output, but the supplied MCP documentation does not say which of those output modes the MCP tools expose directly.

## Limitations and notes

The shipi18n MCP server is not a hosted translation management service. It does not provide an account, dashboard, or Shipi18n-hosted API. Structural checks do not judge whether a translation reads naturally or preserves the source meaning; use semantic review for that class of issue.

Semantic review depends on an external provider key and makes the network request from the user’s machine to that provider. The provided material does not establish that the MCP package performs translation itself, so use the documented MCP capabilities for checking, diffing, and reviewing rather than assuming the full CLI translation workflow is available through MCP.

_Full upstream README: https://allmcps.com/mcp/shipi18n/readme_