elgarde-mcp

An MCP server that answers "what should I check before buying this used car?"

Give an assistant a make and model and it comes back with a real inspection checklist for that car — plus the model's documented weak points, and a scoring pass that tells you what the answers add up to.

You: I'm looking at a 2015 Golf 1.6 TDI tomorrow. What should I check?

Claude: [get_inspection_checklist make="Volkswagen" model="Golf" fuelType="diesel"]
        33 items. Beyond the usual — panel gaps, tyre wear, service history — this
        car has known weak points worth budgeting for: the DQ200 dry-clutch DSG,
        the 1.4 TSI chain tensioner, and TDI EGR/DPF clogging on short trips…

Tools

| Tool | What it does | |---|---| | get_inspection_checklist | The checklist for a specific car: base items, fuel-specific items, and the model's known defects. Five languages. | | get_known_defects | Just the curated weak points for a make and model. | | score_inspection | Rolls 1–5 answers into per-section scores and one verdict, with the critical clamp applied. | | decode_vin | A 17-character VIN → make, model, year, fuel type (free NHTSA vPIC data). |

The first three run entirely offline — the inspection data ships inside the package. Only decode_vin touches the network, calling the free public Elgarde API with no key and nothing about you attached.

Install

Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or any MCP client that spawns a process:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "elgarde": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "elgarde-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

In Claude Code:

claude mcp add elgarde -- npx -y elgarde-mcp

Remote

The same four tools over streamable HTTP, for clients that connect to a URL:

npx elgarde-mcp-http           # or: PORT=9000 node http.js
# POST http://127.0.0.1:8200/mcp

Stateless by design — a fresh server per request, no session store, nothing to expire. The tools are read-only and hold no user state.

What it is not

Elgarde is a self-service checklist, not a certified, mechanical or legal inspection, not professional advice, and not a vehicle-history or title service. A defect entry describes a known weak point on a model — something worth checking — and is never a claim about an individual car. An empty defect result means nothing is curated for that model yet, not that the model is trouble-free. Every tool response repeats this, so an assistant relaying the output has no excuse for overstating it.

Where the data comes from

The open Elgarde inspection canon: checklist content authored in English, Portuguese, Russian, Ukrainian and French, curated defect rules for common European used models, and a written scoring specification pinned by conformance vectors that every Elgarde implementation must pass.

Code MIT; the inspection data is CC-BY-4.0 — attribution to https://elgarde.com/ is the only condition.

Publishing to the MCP registry

server.json is the registry manifest. The com.elgarde/* namespace has to be proved by a DNS TXT record on elgarde.com before the first publish:

npx @modelcontextprotocol/publisher login dns --domain elgarde.com
npx @modelcontextprotocol/publisher publish

The publisher prints the TXT record to add. Using the domain namespace rather than io.github.elgardecom/* keeps the server's identity on the same domain as the data and the API.