Italian Bus Search MCP Server

Italian Travel Search

An unofficial, read-only TypeScript service for live Italian coach and train searches through HTTP and Model Context Protocol interfaces.

The project hides provider-specific station catalogs, request formats, fare structures, and multi-leg responses behind one shared application core. Italo pricing initializes an anonymous technical session and temporary planning resource; customer login, fare selection, seat reservation, and payment are excluded.

[!IMPORTANT] This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Itabus, Autoservizi Salemi, Autolinee Federico, MarinoBus, or FlixBus. Provider names and trademarks belong to their owners. Before enabling a live adapter, confirm that your use complies with the provider's terms, applicable law, and any required authorization. This repository does not grant data-extraction or redistribution rights.

Features

• One response model for locations and journeys across different booking platforms.
• Live adapters for five bus operators and two train operators.
• Partial results when one provider fails and another succeeds.
• MCP over local stdio or stateless Streamable HTTP at /mcp, with backward-compatible bus tools and separate rail tools.
• Trenitalia and Italo station and journey searches directly from their live booking APIs.
• Official links for continuing a search manually on provider sites.
• Searches respect the requested departure day; city searches preserve all Itabus stops, with physical-stop names/addresses where available.
• Rail warnings identify urban transfers excluded from the quoted fare.
• Structured, provider-scoped errors instead of leaked upstream responses.
• Finite upstream request timeouts and bounded asynchronous quote polling.
• One-hour location caches and 60-second journey caches.
• Opt-in immutable journey pagination with five-minute in-memory snapshots, shared by HTTP and MCP.
• Per-client in-memory rate limiting at 60 requests per minute.
• Offline tests with synthetic fixtures; the test suite never contacts provider sites.
• A small runtime dependency surface: the official MCP SDK and Zod.

Supported providers

Public provider behavior and limitations are documented in the bus and train API guides below.

Train stations, journeys, prices and availability come directly from Trenitalia and Italo booking APIs. No timetable download, dataset, storage volume or initialization command is required. If one operator fails, its error is reported alongside the other operator's results. ViaggiaTreno and Italo live boards/standalone status remain independent; Italo quote sessions are cleaned up best-effort.

Requirements

• Node.js 22.18 or newer
• npm

Quick start

git clone https://github.com/Alexxanddr/italian-travel-search.git
cd italian-travel-search
npm install
cp .env.example .env
npm start

The server listens on http://127.0.0.1:3000 by default.

curl http://127.0.0.1:3000/health
curl http://127.0.0.1:3000/providers
curl http://127.0.0.1:3000/train-providers
curl 'http://127.0.0.1:3000/locations?query=Roma&provider=marinobus'

For journey searches, use today or a future date in Europe/Rome:

curl 'http://127.0.0.1:3000/journeys?origin=Roma&destination=Milano&date=YYYY-MM-DD&adults=1&children=0&provider=marinobus'

YYYY-MM-DD is a placeholder and must be replaced before running the command.

Web frontend

The dark, Italian-language Binario interface lives in frontend/ in this repository. It searches bus and train journeys through the HTTP API, with a single origin/destination/date form, progressive results, stable snapshot pagination and official booking links. It has no account, payment, AI model or direct provider/MCPHub access in the browser.

From the repository root:

npm ci
npm ci --prefix frontend
npm start
# In another terminal, from the same repository root:
npm run web:dev
# Open http://127.0.0.1:5173

The local frontend proxy defaults to the API at http://127.0.0.1:3000. Optional local configuration belongs in ignored frontend/.env.local; copy frontend/.env.example if needed. Never use browser-exposed VITE_* variables for credentials.

npm run build:all
# Install Chromium once before running browser tests:
cd frontend
npx playwright install chromium
cd ..
npm run check:all

npm run build and npm run check retain their existing backend behavior. The frontend shares domain types and keeps its own build lockfile. The existing root Dockerfile builds both parts into one image: Node serves the UI at /, the browser API at /api/*, the existing HTTP endpoints and MCP at /mcp, all on port 3000. No NGINX or second container is needed. The npm package remains API/MCP-focused and excludes frontend assets/tooling. See the frontend guide, single-image Docker packaging, and publication review. Publishing source code does not require hosting a live website.

The published image is multiarch: linux/amd64 and linux/arm64 share the same tag, and Docker selects the matching architecture automatically.

One image, one process

docker build -t italian-travel-search:local .
docker run --rm -p 127.0.0.1:3000:3000 italian-travel-search:local
# UI: http://127.0.0.1:3000/
# API: http://127.0.0.1:3000/api/providers (also /providers)
# MCP: http://127.0.0.1:3000/mcp

Without Docker, npm run build:all followed by node dist/index.js serves the same combined application. npm run web:dev remains the optional development server with live rebuilding.

HTTP interface

/locations and /journeys accept an optional provider parameter. Without it, all providers are queried independently and successful data is preserved alongside provider-scoped errors.

The complete contract is split into the Bus API and Train API, with shared behavior indexed in HTTP API.

MCP server

The simplest MCP configuration runs the published package directly with npx:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "italian-travel-search": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "italian-travel-search@latest"]
    }
  }
}

Alternatively, build and start the local stdio server:

npm run build
npm run mcp:built

The existing list_providers, search_locations, and search_journeys bus tools remain compatible. Location and journey searches accept optional offset/limit; increment offset by limit until truncated is false to retrieve every page. Rail adds list_train_providers, search_train_locations, search_train_journeys, get_train_status, and get_station_board. Trenitalia and Italo price and live adapters are enabled; Italo live tools retain date-unverified semantics.

For exhaustive journey searches, start with snapshot: true and continue with only the returned searchId, offset and limit. This keeps prices, errors, order and totals identical across pages. Expired IDs require a new search. The same opt-in flow exists over HTTP; see stable pagination.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "italian-travel-search": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/italian-travel-search/dist/mcp/stdio.js"]
    }
  }
}

For a container or remote MCPHub deployment, start the HTTP process and point the client to http://italian-travel-search:3000/mcp. The container image is ghcr.io/alexxanddr/italian-travel-search:latest. No dataset initialization or persistent volume is needed.

See MCP interface for the authoritative tool contract, limits, errors, and development command.

Architecture

The application has four layers:

1. HTTP and MCP adapters validate their transport-specific requests;
2. shared validation and SearchService orchestrate searches and partial results;
3. each provider adapter translates a remote protocol into domain types;
4. the domain module owns normalized data and error contracts.

Provider adapters implement one shared interface, so callers do not know whether a result came from Itabus Demandware or an Albatross tenant. See Architecture for modules, seams, data flow, caches, and test strategy.

Development

npm run dev
npm run mcp
npm run check

npm run check runs the complete offline test suite, TypeScript type checking, and the configured lint check. To add an operator, follow Adding a provider; do not infer a new integration from HTML alone or copy credentials into fixtures.

Deployment

The default server deliberately binds to loopback and keeps rate-limit and cache state in process memory. Read Operations before placing it behind a reverse proxy or running multiple replicas.

Project documentation

• HTTP API — shared behavior and error contract.
• Bus API — bus providers, locations, journeys, and examples.
• Train API — rail schedules, live prices/status, provenance, and examples.
• MCP interface — authoritative tools, results, limits, and transport contract.
• Architecture — modules, seams, flows, and design decisions.
• Adding a provider — research, implementation, and verification checklist.
• Operations — configuration, deployment constraints, and failure handling.
• Glossary — stable project terminology.
• Contributing — local workflow and pull-request expectations.
• Security policy — private vulnerability reporting and supported versions.
• Agent instructions — compact routing instructions for coding agents.

Scope and limitations

• Searches are one-way only.
• Availability is a provider-reported signal, not a seat or price guarantee.
• Prices and schedules can change between search and purchase; rail results expose live observation and source metadata. The legacy field name timetableSource is retained for compatibility.
• Caches and rate limits reset when the process restarts and are not shared across replicas.
• Upstream interfaces are unofficial and can change without notice.
• Both interfaces intentionally exclude accounts, bookings, payments, and CAPTCHA handling.

Always complete and confirm a purchase on the official provider site linked by bookingUrl.

Contributing and security

Contributions are welcome; start with CONTRIBUTING.md. Report vulnerabilities privately according to SECURITY.md, not through a public issue.

License

Source code is available under the MIT License. The license covers this repository's code, not third-party data, provider trademarks, or access rights to upstream systems.

Train connections to Cosenza

Search Cosenza directly: the backend preserves native connections via Paola, including Italo services followed by a Trenitalia regional train when offered by the booking API. Results include both legs, their operators, the interchange and the combined passenger fare when fully available. The destination is never silently replaced with Paola. See Train API.