Adsb

What Adsb does

Adsb provides live aircraft tracking through the Pipeworx gateway and community ADS-B data. It is intended for questions about aircraft transmitting at the time of the request, such as which planes are near a location, where a particular airframe is, or where a callsign is currently broadcasting from.

The service returns operational position data including latitude and longitude, altitude, ground speed or speed, heading, and, for nearby-aircraft results, vertical rate. The military-aircraft query covers military and government airframes that are currently visible through ADS-B worldwide.

These are live-position lookups, not flight schedule searches. A specific aircraft or callsign must be transmitting for the corresponding lookup to return a current position.

How it works

A hosted MCP connection uses the scoped endpoint at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/adsb/mcp. The full Pipeworx gateway is also available at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp; both connect to the same gateway and data sources, while the scoped endpoint lists the Adsb tools directly.

The scoped endpoint also exposes shared Pipeworx gateway tools, including routing and discovery tools. The exact set is reported during MCP initialization and can change. By default, the local npm bridge lists the Adsb pack's tools; setting PIPEWORX_META_TOOLS=1 adds the shared gateway tools.

For clients without MCP support, individual tools can be called over HTTP. The gateway accepts JSON requests such as a latitude and longitude for aircraft_near.

Setup and configuration

Add the hosted endpoint as an MCP server in a compatible client:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "adsb": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/adsb/mcp"
    }
  }
}

The npm option runs a local stdio bridge with npx:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "adsb": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-adsb"]
    }
  }
}

The bridge needs network access and has no offline mode. Anonymous use is capped at 50 calls per day. A free Pipeworx account raises the limit to 200 daily calls; provide its key as PIPEWORX_API_KEY in the client environment. The key is sent as a Bearer token.

Set NODE_USE_ENV_PROXY=1 when the Node.js version in use supports its environment proxy behavior and the connection must operate behind an HTTPS proxy.

Tools and capabilities

• aircraft_near finds every aircraft within a radius of a latitude and longitude point. Results include live position, altitude, ground speed, heading, and vertical rate.
• get_aircraft looks up a transmitting aircraft by its 24-bit ICAO hex address, such as a835af, and returns its current position and movement data.
• find_by_callsign finds the aircraft currently broadcasting a callsign such as UAL123, returning live position, speed, altitude, and heading.
• military_aircraft returns currently tracked military and government aircraft worldwide, including position, altitude, speed, and heading.
• ask_pipeworx can route a plain-English question to an appropriate gateway tool when the shared meta-tools are enabled or when using the full gateway.

Limitations and notes

Results depend on aircraft transmitting ADS-B and being visible to the community tracking network. The tools provide real-time position data rather than schedules. The integration is independent and unofficial, and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the upstream data provider.

Hosted and npm connections reach the Pipeworx gateway, so calls require network access. Anonymous and authenticated usage have different daily limits. The npm bridge forwards calls to the hosted endpoint rather than providing a local aircraft-data service.

Adsb is released under the MIT license.