Dogpolicies MCP README

DogPolicies MCP server

dogpolicies.com · Verified dog rules for California and Nevada travel: hotel pet fees, trip plans, highway stops. Install guide and example · Status

DogPolicies answers dog-travel questions for California and Nevada, and every fact it returns carries its official source (an agency page or the business's own published policy) and the date it was checked; Nevada coverage is still thin. It does the work a web page cannot: the pet-fee arithmetic for a specific dog, day-by-day trip plans, highway stops in driving order with Caltrans conditions on I-5 right now, what changed since a date, and corrections a person checks.

Listed in Claude's connector directory since November 4, 2026: add DogPolicies in Claude with nothing to install. Also on npm and in the official MCP Registry. DogPolicies is independent and not affiliated with Anthropic.

Connect

The hosted server is https://dogpolicies.com/mcp/: Streamable HTTP, no key, no account, nothing to install.

• Claude (claude.ai or Claude Desktop): open DogPolicies in Claude's connector directory, add it and turn it on in the chat's tools menu. By hand: Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, name DogPolicies, URL https://dogpolicies.com/mcp/.
• Claude Code: claude mcp add --transport http dogpolicies https://dogpolicies.com/mcp/
• Cursor and VS Code: Both add the hosted URL; the app asks you to confirm.
• Any other client that connects to a remote MCP server: give it the URL above.

To run it on your own machine over stdio instead (the data ships inside the package and works offline; Node.js 20.19 or newer):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "dogpolicies": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "dogpolicies-mcp"] }
  }
}

On Windows write "command": "cmd", "args": ["/c", "npx", "-y", "dogpolicies-mcp"], because clients start commands without a shell. Or let the installer write it:

npx dogpolicies-mcp install                      # Claude Desktop; --client cursor | vscode | windsurf | claude-code, or --all
npx dogpolicies-mcp install --hosted --dry-run   # the URL form instead, previewed without changing anything
claude mcp add dogpolicies -- npx -y dogpolicies-mcp   # Claude Code (Windows: -- cmd /c npx -y dogpolicies-mcp)

The installer finds the client's config on Windows, macOS and Linux, backs it up, merges one entry without touching other settings, refuses a file it cannot parse and prints the restart step. Claude Desktop also takes the one-click extension, dogpolicies-mcp-<version>.mcpb, from the latest release. npx dogpolicies-mcp --http --port 3737 serves Streamable HTTP at http://127.0.0.1:3737/mcp.

What it does

The tools, by the job they do. Every one except dogpolicies_report_correction only reads.

Fit and arithmetic

• dogpolicies_find_hotels: which hotels take this dog, by weight, number of dogs, nights and a pet-fee budget. Each hotel is a match, a possible (call to confirm) or excluded, with the arithmetic spelled out ("2 dogs x 3 nights x $25 per pet per night = $150, capped at $100 per stay = $100"). Amounts are pet fees, never room rates.
• dogpolicies_plan_trip: a whole stay in one call. Stays that fit, with the pet fee for every night worked out, then the plan day by day: the stay, a morning beach, trail or off-leash area, an afternoon park and a dinner patio, each a real record with its source and date; a slot the data cannot fill is left empty with the reason. start_date dates each day, stay_id builds the plan on a chosen stay, and save: true returns a https://dogpolicies.com/trips/#v1.… link that carries the whole plan inside the link, so nothing is stored. Near I-5 it adds the drive leg.
• dogpolicies_get_brand_policy: a hotel chain's published pet policy (Best Western, Extended Stay America, Kimpton, La Quinta, Motel 6, Red Roof), its listed exceptions and how many properties carry it.

Routes and live state

• dogpolicies_route_stops: dog stops along a highway in driving order, each with its mile, side and distance off the road: I-5, US-101, Highway 1, I-15, I-80 and US-50 in California; I-15, I-80, US-50, US-95 and US-93 in Nevada. Rest areas with pet areas, travel stops with dog parks, hotels with the stay's pet fee, campgrounds, parks and beaches. On I-5 also family stops (restrooms and a pet area stated by the source) and paired exits.
• dogpolicies_i5_corridor: I-5 in California by named stretch (the Grapevine, the Westside, Shasta and the rest), a mile range or the next miles ahead of a point.
• dogpolicies_i5_conditions: Caltrans lane closures, chain controls, road weather and sign messages on I-5 right now, each placed on the road beside the nearest dog stop. Live state, not rules; it needs the network.

A rest area Caltrans reports closed right now carries closed_now (Caltrans' reason and end time) in route_stops, i5_corridor and plan_trip, and is never offered as the next stop.

• dogpolicies_road_conditions: Caltrans chain controls, lane and ramp closures, road weather and sign messages right now on I-80, US-50, I-15 and I-5 in California (Donner Summit, Echo Summit, Cajon Pass, the Grapevine), by route, town or named stretch, each at its route mile beside the nearest dog stop. Live state, not rules; Nevada roads are not covered; it needs the network.

Change

• dogpolicies_changes_since: re-checks and rule changes since a date, newest first; on the hosted server also the corrections filed or decided since then, by ticket and status.
• dogpolicies_changes_near: the same around a town, region or point, for one place (place_id) or along a highway's stops (route, from_mile, to_mile), to re-check a trip before you go.
• dogpolicies_subscribe_changes: Atom and JSON Feed links that follow one place, a town or area, or a highway's stops for rule changes, with the last 90 days' counts and a sentence to hand to the traveler; it stores nothing and sends no email.

Comparison and citation

• dogpolicies_near: everything dog-related near a town, neighborhood, region or airport, nearest first by kind; the usual first call. Names as people say them ("Van Nuys", "the Mission", "Lake Tahoe", "SFO", "LAX airport"); small spelling slips are corrected and labeled.
• dogpolicies_search_places: one named place, or a filtered list by type, county, region, area, dogs allowed or off leash. Free text such as "dog friendly hotels in Carmel" is read as the kind and the place.
• dogpolicies_browse_answers: ready-made answers to common questions ("Which California state parks allow dogs?").
• dogpolicies_get_place: one place in full: every fact with its source URL, publisher, quote and date checked, the rule ids, and what the source does not state.
• dogpolicies_compare_places: two to six places side by side (dogs allowed, leash, where dogs may go, pet fee, weight limit, pets per room), with a citation for each.
• dogpolicies_get_rule: one rule by its stable id, with the quote, source, confidence and verified date.

Action

• dogpolicies_report_correction: files a correction for a person to check against the official source. The answer carries a ticket id and a public status page (https://dogpolicies.com/corrections/status/<ticket>/) that shows filed, then verified or rejected, with dates; what the traveler wrote is not shown. Nothing changes until it is verified. The only tool that writes.
• dogpolicies_plan_trip with save: true: a trip link to hand over (above).

Every answer

• Starts with a citation sentence and ends with DogPolicies, dogpolicies.com, CC BY 4.0, verified {date}. Every record carries confidence (stated, inferred_from_agency, inherited_brand), freshness (fresh, due, stale, unreadable), verified_at, url and source_urls. A fact the source does not state is listed as not stated, never filled in.
• Plain words work as arguments: "hotel", "NB", "Motel 6" or "yes" are read as the value the schema wants and labeled resolved_from. An argument that still does not fit comes back as outcome: "bad_input" with what is accepted, not a protocol error; a question the data cannot answer is no_match with did_you_mean, nearest and next. isError means the server itself failed or refused a write (rate_limited).
• Markdown by default, structured JSON with response_format: "json", and an output schema on every tool. The full reference, generated from the code: docs/tools.md.
• Resources attach a record without a tool call: dogpolicies://place/{id}, brand/{id}, answer/{slug}, route/{id} and area/{id} (with completion), plus dogpolicies://about, answers, status and corridor/i-5. Prompts for the slash menu: plan_dog_trip, check_hotel_for_dog, road_trip_with_dog, drive_i5_with_dog, what_can_my_dog_do_here, cite_a_rule.

Not using MCP?

The read-only tools are also plain GET operations at https://dogpolicies.com/api/v1/ask/<operation>, run by the same engine with the same answers. The operation is the tool name without dogpolicies_, with hyphens (near, find-hotels, plan-trip, route-stops); arguments go in the query string, a point as near.lat=…&near.lon=…. The OpenAPI 3.1 description: https://dogpolicies.com/api/v1/openapi.json

curl "https://dogpolicies.com/api/v1/ask/find-hotels?county=Monterey&dog_weight_lb=70&max_total_fee=50"

Status and data

dogpolicies.com/status shows the hosted server's version and commit, the data date, the last re-check, open corrections and the call tally; https://dogpolicies.com/api/v1/status.json is the same as JSON. The package ships a dated snapshot (as_of in every result), serves it at once, then checks https://dogpolicies.com/data/mcp-snapshot-v1.json in the background and swaps in a newer one when it exists. DOGPOLICIES_OFFLINE=1 (or --offline) never uses the network. All options: docs/configuration.md.

Try it in the terminal

npx dogpolicies-mcp demo              # off-leash beaches near San Diego, with citations
npx dogpolicies-mcp demo "Monterey"   # hotels in Monterey for a 70 lb dog, 2 nights, fees worked out
npx dogpolicies-mcp check             # load the data and call every tool once

The demo output is the exact text an assistant receives:

- Coronado Dog Beach (Coronado, CA): Yes, with restrictions. Dogs may be off leash only on the
  designated Dog Beach area at 200 Ocean Boulevard and must be leashed at all points before
  reaching it. Source: City of Coronado, checked 2026-10-26. DogPolicies record:
  https://dogpolicies.com/places/coronado-dog-beach/ (CC BY 4.0; cite with link).
  `coronado-dog-beach` · Coronado, San Diego County, California · 3 mi · freshness fresh

Troubleshooting

• It does not show up. Restart properly: fully quit Claude Desktop (tray icon or Claude menu → Quit; closing the window leaves it running); in Cursor toggle the server in Settings → MCP; in VS Code run MCP: List Servers → Start; in Windsurf press Refresh in the MCP panel.
• Check the server itself. npx dogpolicies-mcp check calls every tool; if it works, the problem is the client's config or restart. Logs: Claude Desktop %APPDATA%\Claude\logs\mcp.log and mcp-server-dogpolicies.log (Windows) or ~/Library/Logs/Claude/ (macOS); Cursor: Output → MCP Logs; VS Code: MCP: List Servers → Show Output; Claude Code: claude mcp list.
• "spawn npx ENOENT" on Windows. Use the cmd /c npx form above (the installer writes it) or the hosted URL.
• Behind a proxy. npx must reach registry.npmjs.org once (set HTTPS_PROXY); the hosted URL and the extension need no npm.
• Still stuck? Open an issue with the output of npx dogpolicies-mcp check, your OS and client: https://github.com/xultrax-web/dogpolicies-mcp/issues

Privacy

• Nothing is collected. No telemetry, analytics or crash reporting; tool arguments are never logged above debug level (stderr, your terminal).
• What leaves your machine with the local package: one conditional GET for the data snapshot on start and, only when you file a correction, the text you typed plus an optional contact you chose to give. Both go to dogpolicies.com over https and nowhere else; --offline stops both. The hosted server counts calls by tool and client name, never questions or addresses. Threat model and controls: docs/security.md.

License and attribution

• Code: MIT.
• Data: CC BY 4.0. Attribute "DogPolicies" with a link to https://dogpolicies.com/ and cite each record with its URL and verified date; every result includes a ready-made citation line. Chain-hotel names and locations come from OpenStreetMap under the ODbL and say so in record_license.
• The rules are a sourced, dated summary, not legal advice. Confirm with the agency or the business before you go, especially when a record says stale, unreadable or inherited_brand. Service animals are governed by the ADA, not these pet rules. Terms: https://dogpolicies.com/terms/

For developers

import { createRuntime, connectInProcess } from "dogpolicies-mcp";

const ctx = createRuntime({ overrides: { offline: true } });
const { client, close } = await connectInProcess(ctx);
const r = await client.callTool({
  name: "dogpolicies_plan_trip",
  arguments: { place: "Monterey", dog_weight_lb: 70, nights: 3 },
});
console.log(r.content[0].text);
await close();

createServer(ctx) returns an McpServer from the official @modelcontextprotocol/server SDK for any transport. The reusable, dog-free core (dogpolicies-mcp/core) and how to build another server on it: docs/architecture.md. Versioning and deprecation: docs/versioning.md. Contributing: CONTRIBUTING.md.

Tests: npm test runs unit, contract, security, performance, surface, eval and fuzz tests; npm run test:e2e packs the tarball and runs it over stdio. CI runs on Linux, macOS and Windows with Node 20, 22 and 24.