AQICN MCP Server

The AQICN MCP Server bridges the gap between conversational AI assistants and real‑time environmental data. By exposing the World Air Quality Index (AQICN) API through the Model Context Protocol, it lets developers query air quality metrics for any city or geographic coordinate directly from within an LLM workflow. This eliminates the need to manually fetch, parse, or cache AQI data, enabling applications that require up‑to‑date pollution information to remain lightweight and responsive.

At its core, the server offers three intuitive tools. city_aqi accepts a city name and returns a structured record containing the current Air Quality Index, the monitoring station, dominant pollutant, timestamp, and geographic coordinates. geo_aqi performs the same operation but uses latitude/longitude pairs, making it ideal for mobile or IoT scenarios where precise location data is available. Finally, search_station allows users to discover monitoring stations by keyword, returning a list of station names, identifiers, and coordinates. These tools are designed to be straightforward for LLMs: a single function call yields all necessary data without additional post‑processing.

For developers building AI‑powered applications, this server unlocks a range of use cases. Environmental monitoring dashboards can automatically update with the latest AQI values, health‑advisory bots can warn users about poor air quality in their area, and travel assistants can recommend cities with cleaner air. Because the MCP integration is stateless and returns JSON‑serialisable objects, developers can compose complex reasoning chains—such as correlating AQI with weather or traffic data—without handling API keys or rate limits manually.

The server’s design also offers unique advantages. It abstracts away authentication by reading the AQICN API key from an environment variable, keeping credentials out of code. The MCP Inspector tooling allows rapid iteration and debugging, while the optional Smithery installation streamlines deployment on Claude Desktop. By providing a clean, declarative interface to a global environmental data source, the AQICN MCP Server empowers AI assistants to deliver actionable insights about air quality in real time.