$_MCP SERVER

A public Model Context Protocol server. Connect any MCP-capable AI agent — Claude, Cursor and others — and let it query shortage.life data directly: strategic reserves, prices, scenarios, country profiles, incidents and more.

[ 01 ] $_WHAT IS MCP

The Model Context Protocol is an open standard that lets AI assistants call external tools. shortage.life exposes its dataset as ten read-only MCP tools over JSON-RPC 2.0. No key, no account, no cost — the same CC-BY-4.0 data as the public API.

[ 02 ] $_CONNECT

The server speaks JSON-RPC 2.0 over HTTP POST (MCP revision 2024-11-05). Add it to your client as a remote MCP server.

endpointhttps://mcp.shortage.life/mcp

transportJSON-RPC 2.0 · HTTP POST

protocolMCP 2024-11-05

authnone — public, no key

licenseCC-BY-4.0

// Claude Code · Claude Desktop

claude mcp add --transport http \
  shortage-life https://mcp.shortage.life/mcp

// Cursor

// ~/.cursor/mcp.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "shortage-life": {
      "url": "https://mcp.shortage.life/mcp"
    }
  }
}

[ 03 ] $_TOOLS · 10 read-only

Each tool maps to one data query. Agents discover them through the tools/list call and run them through tools/call.

tool	params	returns
get_reserve	commodity, country	Current strategic reserve for a commodity in a country.
get_price	commodity	Current spot price for a commodity.
compare_countries	commodity, countries[]	Compare a commodity's strategic reserves across several countries.
list_scenarios	status?	List prospective shortage scenarios, optionally filtered by status.
search_briefings	query, lang?	Keyword-search the published editorial briefings.
get_country_profile	iso	Full country profile — stress index, region and reserves.
list_incidents	since?, type?	Geopolitical energy-infrastructure incidents, optionally since a date.
list_market_statements	since?	Market-moving political statements, optionally since a date.
list_bankruptcies	status?	Per-country corporate bankruptcy data.
get_food_prices	—	Current food-commodity prices and their weekly series.

[ 04 ] $_EXAMPLE · JSON-RPC calls

List the tools, then run one. No authentication required.

// tools/list

curl -s https://mcp.shortage.life/mcp \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list"}'

// tools/call

curl -s https://mcp.shortage.life/mcp \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/call",
       "params":{"name":"get_price",
                 "arguments":{"commodity":"oil"}}}'

[ 05 ] $_DISCOVERY

The MCP server is part of an AI-readability layer. The discovery files declare it in a machine-readable form.

/.well-known/agents.json — capability manifest /.well-known/agent-card.json — A2A skills /openapi.json — OpenAPI 3.1 spec for the REST API /llms.txt — curated index for AI systems /api-docs — the public REST API documentation

// node

// $_ exec

// readout · live