Ebay

What Ebay does

Ebay provides agent-accessible read operations for the eBay marketplace. Its three dedicated tools cover active-listing search, individual item lookup, and category discovery. Search results include the listing title, price, condition, seller, thumbnail, and item ID. An agent can pass that ID to the item tool to obtain fuller information.

The integration targets the US eBay marketplace. Category discovery supports both top-level browsing and traversal below a selected category, making it possible to identify category IDs before using them as search filters. The connection uses eBay’s Browse and Taxonomy APIs with client-credentials OAuth through the Pipeworx gateway.

How it works

The hosted MCP endpoint is available at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/ebay/mcp. MCP clients discover the tools during initialization and invoke them through the gateway. The endpoint also exposes shared Pipeworx meta-tools, including routing and discovery functions, so its complete tool list is larger than the three eBay-specific tools. The initialization response defines the exact scope returned for a connection.

A full Pipeworx gateway endpoint is also available at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp. Both gateway URLs can reach the same underlying data sources; the eBay path lists the eBay pack directly, while the full gateway lists all packs directly. The ask_pipeworx meta-tool can route a natural-language request to an appropriate tool from the broader catalog.

For clients without an MCP connection, the gateway provides HTTP tool calls. For example, POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/ebay_search accepts a JSON request, and GET on the same tool path returns its inspection information.

Setup and configuration

Add the hosted endpoint to an MCP client such as Claude Desktop, Cursor, or Windsurf:

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

The npm package @pipeworx/mcp-ebay provides a local stdio bridge. Configure the client to launch it with npx:

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

The bridge still requires network access and forwards calls to the hosted gateway; it has no offline mode. Anonymous use is capped at 50 calls per day. A free Pipeworx account and PIPEWORX_API_KEY raise the allowance to 200 calls per day. Set PIPEWORX_META_TOOLS=1 if the local bridge should also list the gateway-wide meta-tools. When using an HTTPS proxy, newer Node releases can honor the proxy environment settings when NODE_USE_ENV_PROXY=1 is enabled.

Tools and capabilities

• ebay_search searches active US listings and returns summary fields including price, condition, seller, thumbnail, title, and item_id. Category IDs from ebay_get_categories can be supplied to narrow the search.
• ebay_get_item retrieves full details for one listing. It accepts either a REST-style ID such as v1|123456789|0 or a legacy numeric ID.
• ebay_get_categories returns the category subtree below a supplied category ID. Leaving the ID out returns the top-level US categories.

Limitations and notes

This is an independent, unofficial eBay integration and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by eBay. The documented marketplace scope is the United States, and the exposed operations focus on browsing listings and taxonomy data. The local package does not provide offline operation. Gateway usage is subject to daily call limits, with higher limits available through a free Pipeworx account and API key.