@pipeworx/waqi

World Air Quality Index MCP — 12k+ real-time AQI stations worldwide.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1866+ live data sources. This is an independent, unofficial integration — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream provider.

Tools

• get_aqi_by_city(city)
• get_aqi_by_location(latitude, longitude)
• get_aqi_by_station(station_id)
• search_stations(keyword)

Auth

• Platform key: gateway env PLATFORM_WAQI_KEY.
• BYO: ?_apiKey=<token> after registering at https://aqicn.org/data-platform/token/ (free).

Data source

World Air Quality Index — ?token= query param.

Freshness (fleet #3741)

A monitoring station that stops reporting keeps serving its last value, so an upstream feed can answer with a plausible AQI that is months old. Every reading from this pack therefore carries measured_at, the station identity, data_age_hours, freshness (fresh | stale | unknown) and freshness_bound_hours (24).

• get_aqi_by_city and get_aqi_by_location never present a reading older than 24h as current. If the matched station is stale they use the nearest station within 100 km that is reporting (station_selection: "fallback_fresher_station", with skipped_stale_station naming what was passed over), or they error naming the station, its measured_at and its age.
• get_aqi_by_station returns the station that was asked for, labelled with its age, because the caller chose it.
• City matching: see "Place resolution" below.

Place resolution (fleet #3751)

The publisher's city resolver can map a name to the wrong place ("Venice" to a station in Dayton, Ohio). get_aqi_by_city therefore accepts "city" or "city, country" (also "Roma Italia"), and verifies that the matched station's own name is the requested city (exact, a listed exonym such as Venice/Venezia, or one letter off such as Rome/Roma) and, when a qualifier is given, that its country or region agrees. A station that fails is never served: if stations whose own name is the city report in one place, that one is used (station_selection: "resolved_by_search", rejected_upstream_match names what was refused); if several places share the name they are listed; otherwise the call errors naming the station it matched. Every city response carries a place block with the requested and matched place.

Source: World Air Quality Index Project, station network.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "waqi": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/waqi/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/waqi/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1866+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

No MCP client? Call it over HTTP

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/get_aqi_by_city \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"city":"beijing"}'

No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/get_aqi_by_city. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.

Run it from npm

@pipeworx/mcp-waqi is a local stdio bridge to the Pipeworx gateway: your MCP client starts it with npx, and it forwards every call to the same https://gateway.pipeworx.io/waqi/mcp endpoint shown above. It needs network access; there is no offline mode.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "waqi": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-waqi"]
    }
  }
}

Without a key it calls anonymously, capped at 50 calls a day. A free account raises that to 200 a day: get a key at https://pipeworx.io/signup and add "env": { "PIPEWORX_API_KEY": "<your key>" } to the server entry. The key is sent as a Bearer token, the same way a hosted connection sends it, so calls are metered and billed exactly as they are there.

It lists only this pack's tools by default. Set PIPEWORX_META_TOOLS=1 to also list ask_pipeworx and the other gateway-wide tools.

Behind an HTTPS proxy: Node's built-in fetch does not read HTTPS_PROXY by default. Newer Node releases honour it when NODE_USE_ENV_PROXY=1 is set; check your Node version's documentation.

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Waqi data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides
• pipeworx.io

License

MIT