RecallChecker — Vehicle Safety Recalls

What RecallChecker — Vehicle Safety Recalls does

RecallChecker — Vehicle Safety Recalls checks whether NHTSA lists open U.S. safety recall campaigns for a specified vehicle make, model, and model year. The lookup returns the number of matching campaigns and details for each result, including the reported hazard, available remedy, recall date, and a link to the official notice.

The project offers the same underlying lookup through a public website and an MCP endpoint. The website accepts vehicle details through a search interface and provides a shareable result URL. The MCP server exposes the lookup to compatible AI assistants through check_vehicle_recalls(make, model, year).

How it works

The service reads from the NHTSA Recalls API endpoint for vehicle searches. That API supplies U.S. vehicle safety recall campaigns and does not require an API key. The MCP implementation reuses the project’s lookup core, keeping website and assistant results based on the same retrieval logic.

Each response identifies the date on which the data was checked and links to the corresponding NHTSA notice. A result with no campaigns means that NHTSA reported no matching recalls at that time; it does not establish that the vehicle is safe or replace a VIN-specific lookup.

To use the remote MCP service, configure an MCP-compatible client with https://mcp.checkrecall.com/mcp and call the vehicle recall tool with make, model, and year values. The repository also includes local development and deployment commands for the web and MCP workers.

Setup and configuration

The hosted MCP endpoint is available at https://mcp.checkrecall.com/mcp. The source repository documents these development commands:

• npm install installs project dependencies.
• npm run dev starts the local web application through Wrangler.
• npm test runs the unit tests.
• npm run mcp:dev starts the local MCP server.
• npm run deploy deploys the web application.
• npm run mcp:deploy deploys the MCP server.

No NHTSA API key is required. The project uses Next.js, TypeScript, Cloudflare Workers, OpenNext, and Workers KV response caching. Builds use the Webpack option with next build --webpack; the repository notes that Turbopack output is not yet compatible with OpenNext.

Tools and capabilities

The MCP server documents one tool:

• check_vehicle_recalls(make, model, year) — searches NHTSA recall campaigns for the supplied vehicle and returns a human-readable summary with structured data.

The web application also supports make, model, and year searches, displays recall counts and campaign information, and provides reference pages at /recalls/[make]/[model]/[year] for common queries.

Limitations and notes

RecallChecker — Vehicle Safety Recalls covers U.S. safety recall campaign data from NHTSA. It is not described as a VIN decoder or a VIN-specific recall service. A no-results response only reflects the campaigns present in NHTSA when the lookup was performed, so users should read the linked official notice and consider the displayed “as of” date when interpreting results.