ni-c/osm-mcp

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A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for OpenStreetMap, built for travel planning.

Lets MCP clients like Claude Code, Claude Desktop or Codex answer questions about places: geocoding, walking, driving and cycling distances and durations, multi-stop route optimization, isochrones and POI search — 11 tools, all read-only.

Eleven tools is the ceiling, not the floor: OSM_ALLOW_TOOLS=essential registers a curated six instead, and a model picks the right tool far more reliably from six than from eleven — see choosing which tools load.

All backends are free public OpenStreetMap services, so no API key is required. An OpenRouteService key can be supplied optionally to switch the routing engine.

What makes it different

• Correct walking/cycling routes. The public OSRM demo servers ignore the profile segment inside the OSRM URL path and always return car routes unless the FOSSGIS routed-foot / routed-bike / routed-car path prefixes are used. Most existing OSM MCP servers get this wrong and silently return driving times for walking queries. This server uses the prefixes and its live smoke test asserts that foot routes are much slower than car routes.
• Policy-compliant by construction. Per-service rate limiting (Nominatim and OSRM: 1 request/second), an identifying User-Agent on every request (required by the Nominatim usage policy), response caching, capped Overpass concurrency (2 slots) and automatic failover to the next Overpass endpoint on anything but a malformed query, within one 50-second budget per call.
• Photon support. Optional typo-tolerant geocoding via komoot's Photon, which is designed for interactive use — a better fit for LLM-driven lookups than hammering Nominatim.

Requirements

• Node.js ≥ 24
• Internet access to the public OpenStreetMap services (see table below)

Configuration

Every variable is optional — the server works out of the box.

Variable	Default	Description
OSM_USER_AGENT	osm-mcp/<version> (+https://github.com/ni-c/osm-mcp)	User-Agent sent to every service. Nominatim requires a real, identifying one.
NOMINATIM_BASE_URL	https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org	Geocoding / reverse geocoding
PHOTON_BASE_URL	https://photon.komoot.io	Typo-tolerant geocoding
OSRM_BASE_URL	https://routing.openstreetmap.de	Routing, matrices, trip optimization. Must serve the routed-{car,bike,foot} path prefixes (the FOSSGIS layout).
OVERPASS_BASE_URL	https://z.overpass-api.de/api/interpreter,https://lz4.overpass-api.de/api/interpreter	Comma-separated Overpass endpoints, tried in order until one answers (a malformed query stops the walk)
VALHALLA_BASE_URL	https://valhalla1.openstreetmap.de	Isochrones
ORS_API_KEY	–	Optional OpenRouteService key (secret). When set, routes, matrices and isochrones use ORS instead of OSRM/Valhalla. Free tier: 2000 directions/day, 40/minute.
ORS_BASE_URL	https://api.openrouteservice.org	OpenRouteService endpoint
OSM_CACHE_TTL	3600	Seconds identical upstream responses are served from the in-memory cache (0 disables caching)
OSM_ALLOW_TOOLS	no	Comma-separated tool names, list_* prefixes, or essential for a curated preset
OSM_DENY_TOOLS	no	Same syntax; removed from whatever OSM_ALLOW_TOOLS left

Choosing which tools load

OSM_ALLOW_TOOLS and OSM_DENY_TOOLS take comma-separated tool names; a trailing * matches a whole family. essential is a curated preset of six: geocode, reverse_geocode, find_nearby_pois, poi_details, route, map_link.

OSM_ALLOW_TOOLS=essential
OSM_ALLOW_TOOLS=geocode,route,find_nearby_pois
OSM_DENY_TOOLS=isochrone,optimize_route

An entry that matches no tool aborts startup and names it, so a typo cannot silently hide a tool — an absent tool is not something anyone traces back to an environment variable. A filtered tool is never registered, so it is absent from tools/list and unknown to tools/call alike.

If you run several of these servers at once, mcp-hub is the other answer — its /hub endpoint replaces every server's tools with six meta-tools.

Installation

Claude Code

claude mcp add osm -- npx -y osm-mcp

Claude Desktop

claude_desktop_config.json:

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

Codex

~/.codex/config.toml:

[mcp_servers.osm]
command = "npx"
args = ["-y", "osm-mcp"]

Docker

Multi-arch, with SBOM and build provenance:

docker run -i --rm ghcr.io/ni-c/osm-mcp

-i is required — the protocol runs over stdin and stdout. There is no port to publish. More client recipes are in the client guide.

Through mcp-hub

A client that cannot spawn a local process — ChatGPT connectors, Claude on the web, Cursor, LibreChat — reaches osm-mcp through mcp-hub: one container serves many stdio MCP servers over Streamable HTTP, with an OAuth 2.1 login behind a single password and long-lived tokens for the clients that cannot do OAuth. Its /hub endpoint puts every server behind six meta-tools, so one connector reaches all of them without N×tool schemas in the model's context, and it speaks both protocol revisions — a question this server asks travels through it to the person at the far end.

Its /config/mcp.json uses Claude Code's format, so the entry is the one you already have:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "osm": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "osm-mcp"],
      "env": { "OSM_ALLOW_TOOLS": "essential" },
      "denyTools": ["isochrone"]
    }
  }
}

allowTools and denyTools there are the hub's own per-server filter, which is not the same thing as *_ALLOW_TOOLS in env — the difference, and the mistake it invites, are in the client guide.

Tools

Tool	Description
geocode	Place name/address → coordinates (Nominatim or Photon)
reverse_geocode	Coordinates → nearest address
route	Distance and duration between 2+ waypoints, foot/car/bike; optional turn-by-turn summary
route_matrix	Travel time/distance from every origin to every destination in one call
optimize_route	Best visiting order for a set of stops (traveling-salesman, OSRM trip)
isochrone	Reachable area within a time or distance budget (Valhalla, or ORS with key)
find_nearby_pois	POIs around a location by category or raw OSM tag, sorted by distance (Overpass)
poi_details	Full OSM record of one element: opening hours, website, phone, …
suggest_meeting_point	Fair meeting venue for 2–8 people (balanced travel times)
straight_line_distance	Great-circle distance, computed offline
map_link	openstreetmap.org marker / directions links, computed offline

Every place input accepts either a name/address (geocoded automatically) or literal coordinates as "lat,lon".

Structured output

Every tool declares an outputSchema and answers with structuredContent alongside the text block, so a client can use the result without parsing prose:

{
  "untrusted": true,
  "source": "openstreetmap",
  "profile": "foot",
  "engine": "osrm",
  "waypoints": ["Berlin Hauptbahnhof", "Brandenburger Tor"],
  "distance": "2.3 km",
  "distance_m": 2317,
  "duration": "29 min",
  "duration_s": 1740,
}

Every tool carries untrusted: true and source: "openstreetmap" — there is no exception list, because OpenStreetMap is editable by anyone on earth and no tool here answers with anything else. A client that reads only the structured half would otherwise get a mapper's free text with no framing at all.

What this server computes — distances, durations, coordinates, which routing engine ran — is described exactly. What comes out of OSM is described but left open: the tag namespace has no schema, and a mapper adding payment:bitcoin must not take poi_details out of service. The SDK validates every result against its schema before it goes out, so a stricter shape would do exactly that.

The control-character and BiDi stripping this server has always done to its text now runs over the structured value too, key by key. It used to happen on the serialized JSON, which reached every string in it for free.

Usage policies & attribution

This server talks to shared community infrastructure. It enforces the published limits client-side, but the operator asks users to keep overall usage light and non-commercial:

• Data: © OpenStreetMap contributors, licensed under ODbL 1.0.
• Nominatim: max 1 request/second, identifying User-Agent mandatory, results cached (policy).
• OSRM / Valhalla (FOSSGIS): reasonable, non-commercial use; max 1 request/second (about).
• Overpass: ~2 concurrent slots per IP, <10 000 queries/day (wiki).
• Photon: fair use (photon.komoot.io).

For heavy or commercial use, self-host the services and point the *_BASE_URL variables at your instances.

Not exposed, on purpose

No editing. All eleven tools are read-only against OpenStreetMap; the editing API is not wired up at all, so there is no write mode to switch off.

No rendering and no tracking. Results are structured data plus links rather than images — map_link hands you a URL to look at the map yourself — and there is no state between calls.

No offline mode. Every answer comes from the public OpenStreetMap services, under their usage policies.

Safety

• All tools are read-only; the server never writes to OpenStreetMap.
• No credentials are required; the optional ORS_API_KEY is removed from the process environment after loading and redacted from error messages.
• OSM-sourced content (names, addresses, tags) is marked as untrusted data in tool results so the model treats it as data, not instructions.
• Upstream error bodies are truncated and HTML error pages dropped before they reach the model context; the HTTP status is decided before a body is read.
• Every value a service answers is shaped before it reaches a result: finite numbers, bounded strings, one malformed element dropped rather than the whole listing.
• Redirects are never followed; all requests time out.

Documentation

The full guide, tool reference and security notes live at osm-mcp.ni-c.de (source in docs/).

Development

npm install
npm run lint          # oxlint + prettier
npm test              # unit tests (all upstream APIs mocked)
npm run test:coverage
npm run build
npm run smoke         # opt-in LIVE test against the real public services

Releasing

Tag-driven, no manual publish step:

1. Move the [Unreleased] entries into a new ## [x.y.z] - YYYY-MM-DD section in CHANGELOG.md and bump package.json.
2. npm run lint && npm run build && npm run test:coverage.
3. Commit, then a signed annotated tag: git tag -s vx.y.z -m "vx.y.z".
4. git push origin main vx.y.z.

release.yml then runs the tests, publishes to npm with provenance via Trusted Publishing (no token secret involved), creates the GitHub release from the CHANGELOG section, and publishes to the MCP registry as io.github.ni-c/osm-mcp. ci.yml pushes the multi-arch image to GHCR on the same tag.

If the registry step fails, fix it on main and dispatch the Publish to MCP Registry workflow — do not re-run the tag job, which would check out the old tree.

Contributing

Issues, discussions and pull requests are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md. For vulnerabilities please use private reporting rather than a public issue; the policy is in SECURITY.md.

License

MIT © Willi Thiel