jobstack-mcp

A remote MCP (Model Context Protocol) connector for JobStack — the unified jobs-search API (jobs-api) that fuses official job-board feeds and public ATS boards (USAJOBS, Adzuna, Jooble, The Muse, Reed, and Greenhouse/Lever/Ashby/Workable/SmartRecruiters behind one ats engine) into one flat Job shape.

Live: https://jobstack-mcp.vercel.app/mcp — 2 tools, exposed over the MCP streamable-HTTP transport. Since the upstream jobs-api deployment is metered (RapidAPI/Apify) and its /v1/* routes sit behind a RapidAPI proxy-secret guard, this connector authenticates its own outbound calls with that same secret (JOBSTACK_MCP_PROXY_SECRET, sent as the X-RapidAPI-Proxy-Secret header) and applies a soft per-IP rate limit (JOBSTACK_MCP_RATE_LIMIT, default 30 tool-calls/hour, in-memory) so the free MCP tier stays a discovery channel rather than an unmetered bypass of the paid listing — see lib/ratelimit.js.

What this is

JobStack is a plain REST API. This repo is a thin adapter that exposes each endpoint as a discoverable, typed MCP tool so MCP clients (Claude, ChatGPT, any MCP-aware agent) can call it directly, speaking the MCP streamable-HTTP transport at a single /mcp endpoint. It has no business logic of its own — every tool call is a pass-through fetch to jobs-api, and the JSON response is handed back verbatim as the tool result.

Tools

Both tools are read-only and annotated { readOnlyHint: true, destructiveHint: false, idempotentHint: true, openWorldHint: true }.

search_jobs inputs

• keywords (string, optional) — free-text search terms.
• location (string, optional) — free-text location filter.
• remote (boolean, optional) — filter to remote roles where the source signals it.
• sources (string, optional) — comma list of engine keys: usajobs, adzuna, jooble, themuse, reed, ats. Omit for all six.
• limit (int 1-100, optional, default 20).
• offset (int ≥0, optional, default 0).

get_job inputs

• source (enum: usajobs | adzuna | jooble | themuse | reed | ats).
• id (string) — native upstream id from a search result; for ats, the composite board:company:nativeId string.

Config

• JOBSTACK_MCP_API_BASE_URL — upstream base URL. Default https://jobs-api-gamma.vercel.app.
• JOBSTACK_MCP_PROXY_SECRET — the RapidAPI proxy secret forwarded as X-RapidAPI-Proxy-Secret on outbound calls (needed for the production origin, which guards /v1/*).
• JOBSTACK_MCP_RATE_LIMIT — soft per-IP tools/call cap per hour. Default 30.

Local development

npm install
npm run dev          # starts local-server.js on http://localhost:3900
npm run smoke        # in another terminal — real HTTP/JSON-RPC smoke test

test/smoke.mjs drives the running server over real HTTP/JSON-RPC and verifies GET /health, initialize (serverInfo.name === "jobstack"), and tools/list (the 2 tools with their zod-derived schemas), then attempts a live search_jobs tools/call. Without JOBSTACK_MCP_PROXY_SECRET set locally the upstream origin returns 403 (its RapidAPI guard) — an expected upstream-auth condition the smoke test reports as a soft warning while still verifying the full protocol surface.

Deploy

cd /Users/isaiahdupree/Software/jobstack-mcp
npx vercel --yes --prod

After deploy, the MCP connector URL to register in Claude/ChatGPT/any MCP client is https://<deployment-domain>/mcp.