rotv-mcp

Read-only Model Context Protocol server for tv.madeinro.eu — Romanian TV guide, streaming catalog and an entertainment concierge, exposed as 14 tools to any MCP-compatible client (Claude, ChatGPT, or your own agent) — including an MCP Apps visual tonight-card.

Live endpoint: https://tv.madeinro.eu/mcp · no auth · streamable HTTP Registry: eu.madeinro/rotv-mcp (official MCP registry) Human-readable overview: tv.madeinro.eu/mcp/help

Quick start

No installation, no key — talk to the live server directly:

# What's important on Romanian TV today? (World Cup, finals, Romania playing…)
curl -X POST https://tv.madeinro.eu/mcp \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'Accept: application/json, text/event-stream' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/call","params":{
        "name":"tv_important_today","arguments":{}}}'

# Decide for me: I have 2 free hours tonight
curl -X POST https://tv.madeinro.eu/mcp \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'Accept: application/json, text/event-stream' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/call","params":{
        "name":"tv_concierge","arguments":{"duration_hours":2,"mood":"captivant"}}}'

As an MCP client (e.g. Claude Code):

claude mcp add --transport http rotv https://tv.madeinro.eu/mcp

Tools

All tools are read-only and declare the standard MCP annotations (readOnlyHint: true), so well-behaved clients can run them without per-call confirmation. Time references accepted throughout: now, tonight, tomorrow, weekend, primetime, or ISO 8601 instant/range.

Core EPG (v1)

Decision layer (v2)

Concierge (v3)

MCP Apps (v3.2+)

The importance layer

Romanian EPG data is diffuse: every program's genre is literally "General", descriptions are often empty, and a World Cup knockout match can appear as just "Fotbal World Cup". There is no structured field that says "this matters".

So importance is detected from real text, with quoted evidence (src/lib/importance.mjs):

• Tier 1 — major: World Cup / Euro / Champions League / Olympics / Grand Slams / finals in the title
• Tier 2 — notable: country-vs-country fixtures ("Spania - Belgia"), competition mentions in descriptions
• Boosts: Romania playing (national team or clubs in European cups), knockout stages, mainstream national channel
• Demotions: recaps, studio/practice shows, broadcasts too short to be the live event

Every result carries reasons[] quoting the text that matched — the detector never claims more than the data supports. The same signal feeds tv_concierge as an event_importance confidence axis, so a description-less World Cup match no longer loses to a well-tagged filler movie, and every concierge answer lists tier-1 events in an important_today field even when the mood-based pick is something else.

Architecture

MCP client ── POST /mcp (streamable HTTP, stateless: fresh server per request)
                 │
        express (loopback :3010)
        access log → rate limit (60 rpm) → optional bearer auth
                 │
        14 tools over in-memory EPG/streaming caches
        + 2 MCP Apps UI resources (tonight-card · concierge-card)
                 │
        JSON artifacts produced by the rotv-guide pipeline
        (epg-normalized.json · epg-homepage.json · streaming-full.json
         · tonight-picks.json)
        hot-reloaded via fs.watch (debounced 750 ms)

• Stateless streamable HTTP (enableJsonResponse) — one McpServer + transport per POST; safe behind any proxy/tunnel.
• Data (read-only, produced by the rotv-guide pipeline, never modified by this service):
  • epg-normalized.json — ~258 TV channels, −6h to +72h, ISO 8601 UTC
  • epg-homepage.json — 15 main channels, −2h to +36h
  • streaming-full.json — Netflix / HBO Max / Prime / Disney+ / Apple TV+ catalogs
  • Paths configurable via ROTV_DATA_DIR.
• Telemetry: every tool call logs one JSON line ({evt:"tool", tool, ms, ok, q:{…}}) to stdout for log analysis.

Running it yourself

Requires Node ≥ 24 and the rotv-guide data artifacts.

cp .env.example .env        # PORT, RATE_LIMIT_RPM, optional MCP_AUTH_TOKEN
npm install
ROTV_DATA_DIR=/path/to/rotv-guide/public/data npm start

Production runs under pm2 behind a Cloudflare tunnel — the path-based ingress rule routes tv.madeinro.eu/mcp/* to localhost:3010, above the catch-all of the main site:

pm2 start ecosystem.config.cjs && pm2 save
curl https://tv.madeinro.eu/mcp/health

Tests

node --test test/importance.test.mjs        # importance detector, 12 cases
npm run smoke                               # 26 end-to-end JSON-RPC checks
BASE=https://tv.madeinro.eu npm run smoke   # same suite against production

License

MIT © 2026 Marian Matinca. The live server surfaces data from public EPG sources, refreshed automatically by the rotv-guide pipeline.