Visa Checker MCP Server

A specialized MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for checking visa appointment availability in real-time

⚡ Quick Start

# Navigate to your project
cd visa-checker-mcp

# Install dependencies (20-30x faster than npm!)
bun install

# Run stdio transport server
bun run dev:stdio

# Run HTTP server with SSE support
bun run dev:http

🚀 Features

🔧 Modern Tooling

• Bun - Lightning-fast package manager and runtime
• TypeScript - Full type safety with comprehensive validation
• ESLint + Prettier - Code linting and formatting
• Vitest - Fast unit testing framework

📡 Visa Appointment Checking

• Live Data: Real-time visa appointment availability from visasbot.com API
• Smart Caching: 5-minute intelligent caching to reduce API load
• Error Resilience: Automatic fallback to cached data when API is unavailable
• Comprehensive Filtering: Filter by country, mission, status, and visa type
• Rich Formatting: Emoji-enhanced status indicators and detailed information

🛠️ MCP Capabilities

• Tools:
  • fetch-visa-appointments - Get comprehensive appointment data with filtering
  • get-open-appointments - Get only centers with available appointments
  • search-visa-centers - Advanced search with multiple filter options
• Resources:
  • visa://appointments - Complete live visa appointment data (JSON)
  • visa://appointments/{country_code}/{mission_code} - Filtered data by country codes
• Features:
  • Transport-aware Logging: Proper stderr logging for stdio compatibility
  • Zod Validation: Runtime type checking for all parameters
  • Error Handling: Graceful degradation with cached data fallback
  • Standards Compliant: Follows official MCP specification

📁 Project Structure

visa-checker-mcp/
├── src/
│   ├── index.ts            # Main MCP server with visa tools and resources
│   ├── services/
│   │   ├── visa.ts         # Visa API client and data processing
│   │   └── visa.test.ts    # Unit tests for visa service
│   ├── config/
│   │   └── server.ts       # Server configuration
│   └── utils/
│       └── logger.ts       # Transport-aware logging
├── package.json            # Project configuration
├── tsconfig.json          # TypeScript configuration
└── README.md              # This file

🎯 Usage Examples

Visa Appointment Checking

The server provides powerful visa appointment checking capabilities through the visasbot.com API:

Available Tools:

1. fetch-visa-appointments - Get comprehensive visa appointment data

   // Get all appointments
   await tool.call('fetch-visa-appointments', {})
      
   // Filter by country (Turkey to Netherlands)
   await tool.call('fetch-visa-appointments', {
     country_code: 'tur',
     mission_code: 'nld'
   })
      
   // Filter by status
   await tool.call('fetch-visa-appointments', {
     status: 'open'
   })

2. get-open-appointments - Get only centers with available appointments

   // Get all open appointments
   await tool.call('get-open-appointments', {})
      
   // Filter open appointments by country
   await tool.call('get-open-appointments', {
     country_code: 'tur'
   })

3. search-visa-centers - Advanced search with multiple filters

   await tool.call('search-visa-centers', {
     country_code: 'tur',
     mission_code: 'nld',
     visa_type: 'tourism',
     status: 'open'
   })

Available Resources:

• visa://appointments - Complete live visa appointment data (JSON)
• visa://appointments/{country_code}/{mission_code} - Filtered data by country codes

Features:

• 🚀 Live Data: Fetches real-time appointment availability
• ⚡ Smart Caching: 5-minute cache to reduce API calls
• 🔍 Advanced Filtering: By country, mission, status, and visa type
• 📊 Rich Formatting: Emoji-enhanced status indicators
• 🛡️ Error Resilience: Automatic fallback to cached data when API is unavailable
• ⚠️ Graceful Degradation: Clear warnings when using cached data
• ✅ Type Safety: Full TypeScript validation with Zod schemas
• 🔄 Timeout Protection: 10-second timeout with proper error handling

Development

# Run stdio transport server (for process communication)
bun run dev:stdio

# Run HTTP server with SSE support (for web-based communication)
bun run dev:http

# Type checking
bun run typecheck

# Linting and formatting
bun run lint
bun run format

Testing Your Server

To test your MCP server, you can:

1. Use Claude Desktop: Add your server to Claude Desktop configuration
2. Use an MCP client library: Connect programmatically via stdio or HTTP
3. Manual testing: Send JSON-RPC messages directly to the server

Example Claude Desktop configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "visa-checker-mcp": {
      "command": "/path/to/bun",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/visa-checker-mcp/src/index.ts"]
    }
  }
}

Getting the correct paths:

# Get your bun path
which bun
# Example output: /Users/username/.bun/bin/bun

# Get your project path  
echo "$(pwd)/src/index.ts"
# Example output: /Users/username/Dev/visa-checker-mcp/src/index.ts

Complete working example:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "visa-checker-mcp": {
      "command": "/Users/username/.bun/bin/bun",
      "args": ["/Users/username/Dev/visa-checker-mcp/src/index.ts"]
    }
  }
}

🔗 Transport Support

stdio Transport

Perfect for local development and CLI tools:

• Direct process communication
• Low latency
• Simple debugging

HTTP + SSE Transport

Ideal for web applications and remote services:

• RESTful API endpoints
• Server-Sent Events for real-time updates
• CORS support for browser clients
• Session management

🏗️ Development

# Install dependencies
bun install

# Lint and format
bun run lint
bun run format

# Build server
bun run build

# Clean build artifacts
bun run clean

📊 Performance Benefits

| Metric | npm/Express | Bun/Hono | Improvement | |--------|-------------|-----------|-------------| | Install Speed | ~15s | ~2s | 7.5x faster | | Framework Size | ~200kB | ~14kB | 93% smaller | | Runtime Overhead | High | Minimal | Native TypeScript | | Cold Start | ~500ms | ~50ms | 10x faster |

🤝 Contributing

1. Fork the repository at https://github.com/kiliczsh/visa-checker-mcp
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

🐛 Troubleshooting

Common Issues

MCP Server JSON Parsing Errors If you see: Unexpected token '🔧', "🔧 Registe"... is not valid JSON

This occurs when using console.log() with stdio transport. The template uses transport-aware logging that automatically uses stderr for stdio transport to avoid interfering with JSON-RPC messages on stdout.

Claude Desktop Configuration Issues

1. Use absolute paths: Relative paths won't work
2. Check bun path: Run which bun to get the correct command
3. Verify file exists: Make sure the TypeScript file path is correct
4. Restart Claude Desktop: Required after config changes

Type Checking Errors Run bun run typecheck to check for TypeScript issues.

Server Connection Issues

1. Test locally first: bun run dev:stdio
2. Check Claude Desktop logs for error messages
3. Ensure the server process has started and the specified command/args are correct
4. Verify bun is installed and accessible at the specified path

Path Issues

# Test if bun command works
/path/to/bun --version

# Test if your server starts
/path/to/bun /path/to/your/project/src/index.ts

🙏 Acknowledgments

• Model Context Protocol - The open standard this template implements
• Bun - The incredibly fast JavaScript runtime and toolkit
• Hono - The ultrafast web framework for the Edges