Usgs Mineral Commodities

What Usgs Mineral Commodities MCP server does

The Usgs Mineral Commodities MCP server provides structured access to the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries release for 85 nonfuel mineral commodities. Covered subjects include lithium, copper, cobalt, rare earths, gold, aluminum, nickel, platinum-group metals, and industrial minerals.

Its data includes five years of U.S. salient statistics: production, imports, exports, consumption, price, employment, and net import reliance. For commodities with corresponding world-table data, it also provides mine or plant production and reserves by country. The release contains world comparisons for 75 of the 85 commodities.

How it works

USGS publishes this material as downloadable ScienceBase files rather than through a JSON or REST service. The package’s build process downloads the salient-statistics and world-data ZIP files, parses their CSV contents, matches commodity names between the publications, and creates an index used by the MCP tools.

The published service stores that index outside the gateway worker’s ordinary static import path and injects it when the pack is first used. This keeps the approximately 509 KB table from being loaded into every gateway isolate. The standalone package uses the same baked data and communicates over standard input and output.

Responses identify the release year and capture timestamp. They also retain USGS values and annotations such as estimated, withheld, unavailable, and textual notes instead of converting every field to a number. Each tool response includes a footnote legend.

Tools and capabilities

• mcs_list_commodities(query?, limit?) searches or lists the 85 supported commodities. Results identify available statistic columns and whether a world comparison is present.
• mcs_commodity_data(commodity) returns the latest five years of U.S. salient statistics. The argument accepts common commodity names or MCS codes.
• mcs_country_comparison(commodity, countries?, limit?) returns country-level world production and reserves for a selected commodity. The production figures contain a prior-year actual and a current-year estimate for the release.

The hosted endpoint also exposes Pipeworx gateway meta-tools, including routing and discovery tools. The local stdio package exposes only the three commodity tools listed above.

Setup and configuration

The Usgs Mineral Commodities MCP server can be added to an MCP client with the hosted URL https://gateway.pipeworx.io/usgs-mineral-commodities/mcp. The README specifically gives configurations for Claude Desktop, Cursor, and Windsurf. No account or API key is required for the documented initial hosted calls.

For local use, run npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-usgs-mineral-commodities and configure the client to launch that command. This mode avoids the gateway and does not include Pipeworx’s shared meta-tools. The hosted service can also be called through HTTP with a POST request to the tool endpoint.

Limitations and notes

The Usgs Mineral Commodities MCP server reflects an annual release, not a live data feed. USGS generally publishes a new release in January and may issue a later revision. Ten commodities in this release lack world production or reserves rows, so country comparison returns a no_world_data result for them.

Commodity table columns differ by MCS chapter. Raw footnote values, including W, E, NA, >50, and free-text notes, remain unchanged. The integration is independent and unofficial, and is not affiliated with or endorsed by USGS.