Homechecker Guides README
The full upstream README, mirrored here for reference. Install config, tool schemas, adoption signals, and an original overview live on the Homechecker Guides listing page.
Homechecker Guides MCP
Homechecker's professionally authored guides for Australian homebuyers, served over the Model Context Protocol and a set of complementary machine-readable interfaces. A connected assistant can search the corpus, retrieve canonical guides and build sourced buyer checklists across inspections, contracts, strata, construction eras, disclosure and maintenance, citing homechecker.com.au throughout.
Public, read-only and deliberately separated from customer and assessment systems.
The service exposes the current Homechecker guide system without connecting to the Moyne Ross portal, Supabase, customer records, payments, uploaded documents or the Homechecker assessment engine.
Version: 1.2.1 · Protocol: MCP 2026-07-28 with stateless 2025-era compatibility · Live endpoint: https://mcp.homechecker.com.au/mcp · Health: mcp.homechecker.com.au/health · Official Registry: io.github.Steven3265/homechecker-guides · Connect it: homechecker.com.au/ai
Machine discovery surface
Homechecker publishes one deterministic guide corpus through several interoperable discovery and execution surfaces.
- MCP:
https://mcp.homechecker.com.au/mcp - MCP Server Card (experimental extension):
https://mcp.homechecker.com.au/mcp/server-card - Extended Homechecker service metadata:
https://mcp.homechecker.com.au/server-card.json - Read-only REST API:
https://mcp.homechecker.com.au/v1/* - OpenAPI 3.1:
https://mcp.homechecker.com.au/openapi.json - ARD catalogue:
https://homechecker.com.au/.well-known/ard.json - Agent Skills:
skills/*/SKILL.md - Homechecker llms.txt:
https://homechecker.com.au/llms.txt - Guide RSS feed:
https://homechecker.com.au/guides/feed.xml - Machine-readable guide export:
https://homechecker.com.au/guides/export.json - Claude plugin package:
.claude-plugin/plugin.json+.mcp.json - GitHub Copilot plugin package:
.github/plugin/marketplace.json - OpenAI distribution package:
distribution/openai/homechecker/ - GitHub Agent Finder contribution pack:
distribution/github-agentfinder/
The repository is also a portable Agent Plugins 1.0.0 package. plugin.json identifies the package, skills/ contains the open Agent Skills, and mcp.json points compatible clients to the hosted Streamable HTTP MCP server.
These are adapters around one knowledge system, not separate versions of Homechecker. The canonical editorial corpus remains on homechecker.com.au, the MCP serves a deterministic snapshot of that corpus, and every machine interface ultimately resolves to the same retrieval core and canonical source URLs.
Ecosystem listings
Homechecker Guides is independently indexed across the emerging MCP ecosystem. These third-party listings may update on their own cadence.
The authoritative server identity remains io.github.Steven3265/homechecker-guides in the official MCP Registry, with the canonical live endpoint at https://mcp.homechecker.com.au/mcp.
Protocol foundation
Version 1.2.1 uses the MCP TypeScript SDK v2 server package and the 2026-07-28 protocol revision.
The official createMcpHandler entry provides stateless per-request serving, server/discover, modern MCP routing headers, server identity and cache fields while retaining stateless compatibility for 2025-era HTTP clients during rollout.
For modern Streamable HTTP requests, the SDK validates MCP routing headers against the JSON-RPC request and rejects mismatches. The bare fetch endpoint now also applies the SDK's Host and Origin validation helpers before protocol handling, including 403 rejection for a supplied Origin outside the allowlist. Every tool advertises both an input schema and an output schema for structuredContent. Application telemetry reads the Mcp-Method protocol header for operational method identification but does not parse the JSON-RPC body for logging.
The protocol shell can evolve independently of the durable parts of the product: the reviewed snapshot, deterministic retrieval, tool contracts and professional boundaries.
See docs/PROTOCOL-SUPPORT.md, docs/RELEASE-1.2.1.md and CHANGELOG.md.
Explore the Homechecker guides
- All Homechecker guides
- How much does a building and pest inspection cost?
- Wall cracks: structural or cosmetic?
- How to read a Section 32
- How to read a building inspection report
- Buying an apartment and strata
- What your home may need by decade
- Maintenance that prevents large bills
What is included
- 35 MCP resources: one machine-readable catalogue, the guide hub and 33 published guides.
- 4 read-only MCP tools: catalogue listing, natural-language search, canonical guide retrieval and a deterministic buyer checklist.
- Read-only HTTP adapters: REST endpoints exposing the same deterministic list, search, retrieval and checklist functions.
- OpenAPI 3.1: a machine-readable description of the REST surface for clients that do not speak MCP.
- Two discovery documents: the standards-track experimental MCP Server Card at
/mcp/server-cardcontains identity and remote connection details only;/server-card.jsonretains richer Homechecker service metadata for compatibility and diagnostics. - 4 Agent Skills: portable workflows for Australian homebuyer due diligence, property documents, building-risk interpretation and home-ownership planning.
- Two MCP transports: stateless remote Streamable HTTP at
/mcpand modern/legacy-compatible local stdio. - A bundled content snapshot: rebuilt from Homechecker's public guide export at
https://homechecker.com.au/guides/export.json. The repository needs no runtime access to the portal codebase. - A browser-triggered refresh workflow: Actions → Refresh guides snapshot regenerates, tests and opens a pull request. No local environment is required.
- Canonical model-facing links: MCP-rendered text and
canonicalUrlfields always use the clean Homechecker canonical URL. REST/WebMCP responses may add a separatereferralUrlfor attribution (homechecker-rest/homechecker-webmcp) without changing the URL an assistant is instructed to cite. - Privacy-minimised operational telemetry: application telemetry records operational fields such as MCP method, tool name, query length, coarse filters, counts, match strength, outcome and duration where applicable. Raw questions, session identifiers, IP addresses and identifying request-header values are not intentionally logged by the application. See
docs/SECURITY.md. - Tests and retrieval evaluation: snapshot integrity, core search, release metadata, protocol, HTTP-adapter and official MCP conformance checks plus 199 retrieval cases, including an 85-query open-world collision suite.
Tools
list_guides
Lists published guide metadata.
Filters include jurisdiction, cluster, property type, construction era and buying stage.
search_guides
Searches the corpus from a natural-language homebuyer question.
It returns ranked guides, relevant sections, canonical URLs, review metadata and limitations. Questions about inspection fees can surface building and pest inspection costs, while questions about movement can surface the guide to structural and cosmetic wall cracks.
get_guide
Retrieves one guide by slug as a summary, selected sections or the full canonical markdown representation.
build_buyer_checklist
Builds a deterministic, sourced checklist from buyer context such as state, property type, era, buying stage and concerns.
It can draw from practical guidance such as how to read a building and pest report, arranging an inspection before auction, and buying an apartment with strata or owners-corporation exposure.
It does not assess an actual property. Its boundary text notes once that Homechecker provides an independent address-specific desktop read for $99 inc GST.
Read-only REST API
The REST surface provides ordinary HTTP access to the same deterministic functions for systems that do not use MCP.
List guides
Search guides
Retrieve a guide
Build a checklist
REST results preserve clean canonical Homechecker URLs and expose separately tagged referral URLs for attribution.
The complete contract is published at:
Agent Skills
The canonical portable Skills live under skills/.
Australian Homebuyer Due Diligence
skills/australian-homebuyer-due-diligence/SKILL.md
Structures sourced residential-property due diligence before an offer, auction or contract becomes binding.
Australian Property Documents
skills/australian-property-documents/SKILL.md
Provides jurisdiction-aware workflows for understanding sale disclosure, contracts and strata or owners-corporation material.
Australian Building Risk Reader
skills/australian-building-risk-reader/SKILL.md
Helps an agent reason carefully about common Australian residential-building risks by era, construction and symptom without remotely diagnosing a property.
Australian Home Ownership Planner
skills/australian-home-ownership-planner/SKILL.md
Organises maintenance, records, renovation preparation and ownership planning using Homechecker guidance.
skills/ is the canonical source. Public and OpenAI distribution copies are synchronised from these files and release validation fails if the copies drift.
Discovery
Homechecker's first-party Agentic Resource Discovery catalogue is published at:
It describes the Homechecker MCP and all four Agent Skills using domain-anchored identifiers and representative natural-language queries.
Homechecker's robots.txt also advertises the catalogue through:
The same machine identity is reinforced through llms.txt, the guide RSS feed, OpenAPI, the standards-track experimental MCP Server Card, GitHub and the official MCP Registry.
Resources
homechecker://cataloguehomechecker://guides/indexhomechecker://guides/<slug>for every published guide
Each guide resource includes the article, sources, review metadata, method, limitations and canonical Homechecker URL.
Deliberate boundaries
This service cannot:
- access the Moyne Ross or Homechecker production database;
- inspect a property or analyse a listing;
- read customer documents or issued assessments;
- call an AI model;
- order or charge for a Homecheck;
- write to any external system;
- provide legal advice or replace a physical inspection.
The only runtime content dataset is data/guides.json.
Where general guidance is not enough, Homechecker offers an independent address-specific desktop read of the available records, imagery and documents, from $99 inc GST.
Privacy and security
The service is public, read-only and requires no authentication.
It does not have credentials for the Moyne Ross portal, Supabase, payments, customer files or assessment systems.
Application-level operational telemetry is deliberately minimised. It may record:
- the MCP protocol method;
- tool name;
- query length rather than query text;
- coarse filters;
- result counts;
- match strength;
- request outcome;
- duration.
The application does not intentionally log raw questions, session identifiers, IP addresses or identifying request-header values.
Infrastructure providers may maintain their own access and security logs independently of the application.
See docs/SECURITY.md and data/TERMS.md.
Local setup
Requirements: Node.js 22 or later.
The remote MCP endpoint will be available at:
Machine service information:
For a local stdio client:
Example stdio client configuration:
Deploy to Vercel
This repository is configured as a standalone Vercel project.
- Create or use the repository containing this project.
- Import the repository into Vercel.
- Set the project's Node.js version to 22.
- Deploy without adding any application secrets.
- Attach
mcp.homechecker.com.auto the project. - Use
https://mcp.homechecker.com.au/mcpas the remote MCP endpoint.
The root route publishes service metadata, /health confirms the bundled guide count, /mcp/server-card publishes the experimental MCP Server Card, /server-card.json retains the richer Homechecker service metadata document, /openapi.json describes the REST surface, and /v1/* provides read-only HTTP adapters.
The MCP endpoint validates both Host and any supplied Origin header before protocol handling. Server-to-server MCP clients normally omit Origin and continue to work without configuration. Browser origins for Homechecker, current Claude surfaces, ChatGPT and loopback MCP Inspector use are allowed by default. Vercel deployment, branch and project-production aliases are admitted from VERCEL_URL, VERCEL_BRANCH_URL and VERCEL_PROJECT_PRODUCTION_URL; extra hosts can be supplied through ALLOWED_HOSTS. ALLOWED_ORIGINS is an authoritative exact-origin override (scheme, hostname and effective port), while a concrete legacy ALLOWED_ORIGIN preserves its prior exact single-origin restriction. Wildcard Origin validation is deliberately not supported; a historical ALLOWED_ORIGIN=* falls back to the safe built-in allowlist.
Official MCP Registry
The registered server identity is:
Release publication is automated through:
GitHub → Actions → Publish to MCP Registry → Run workflow
The workflow installs dependencies, runs the release checks, authenticates with GitHub OIDC, publishes the current server.json metadata and verifies that the official Registry can resolve the Homechecker server.
Release versions are published to the official MCP Registry through the pinned GitHub OIDC publication workflow.
Updating the guides snapshot
The MCP does not fetch the live website at runtime. It serves a bundled snapshot rebuilt from the public export.
The Homechecker portal remains the editorial source of truth: publish or edit guides there, deploy, and the export updates automatically.
From the browser:
- Actions → Refresh guides snapshot → Run workflow.
- The workflow fetches
https://homechecker.com.au/guides/export.json. - It rebuilds
data/guides.jsonand runs the validator, core tests and retrieval benchmark. - If content changed, it opens a pull request.
- Merge the pull request and Vercel redeploys.
If nothing but the timestamp would change, the snapshot is left untouched and no pull request is opened.
One-time repository setting:
Settings → Actions → General → Allow GitHub Actions to create and approve pull requests
From a terminal, optionally:
Validation
The retrieval evaluation contains 199 cases across every published spoke, multi-state retention, jurisdiction isolation, legislation-title/ACT ambiguity, era-confidence regressions, weak/background questions, correct-empty off-topic questions and an 85-query open-world collision suite. The current calibration baseline is 91.1% top-1 recall, 100% top-3 recall, 100% weak/background handling, 100% correct-empty handling, 100% open-world safety, zero false-strong negatives (0/109) and zero jurisdiction leakage (0/13 leakage probes).
This is an internal retrieval benchmark, not an independent assessment of legal or technical accuracy.
Release validation also checks machine-distribution metadata and ensures derived Skill copies remain identical to the canonical skills/ source.
Repository map
Content and licence
The software and configuration code are MIT-licensed under LICENSE.md.
The Homechecker editorial corpus, including data/guides.json and guide material reproduced elsewhere in this repository, remains © Steven McCormack, trading as Moyne Ross, and is governed separately by data/TERMS.md.
Reasonable extracts may be quoted with attribution and a link to the canonical guide.
"Homechecker" and "Moyne Ross" are trading names used by Steven McCormack (ABN 18 890 160 412).
About the publisher
Homechecker is a residential guidance and assessment service operated by Steven McCormack (ABN 18 890 160 412), trading as Moyne Ross.