Earth Search MCP Server

@pipeworx/earth-search

Sentinel and Landsat imagery catalogue from Element 84's Earth Search over the AWS Open Data registry — search Sentinel-1/2, Landsat Collection 2, NAIP and Copernicus DEM by area and date and get item ids, footprints, cloud cover and cloud-optimised GeoTIFF URLs.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1863+ live data sources. This is an independent, unofficial integration — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream provider.

Tools

• earth_search_collections(contains?, prefix?, limit?) — the missions indexed, with licence, extent and date range.
• earth_search_collection(collection_id) — one collection in full, including the asset keys (bands, thumbnails) its items carry.
• earth_search_search(collections?, bbox?, datetime?, ids?, limit?, max_assets?) — which scenes cover an area on given dates. collections is optional here, unlike the sibling catalogues.

Auth

Keyless, metadata and assets. Hrefs resolve on AWS Open Data with no token and no account — this is the catalogue to send a caller to when they need bytes rather than metadata. Some buckets are requester-pays when read over s3:// rather than https://.

Data sources

• https://earth-search.aws.element84.com/v1 — STAC API 1.0.

Shared client: shared/src/stac.ts, also used by planetary-computer, copernicus-dataspace and meteoswiss.

Traps

• This is the one catalogue in the set that allows a catalogue-wide search. Planetary Computer (422) and the Copernicus Data Space (400) both refuse a search with no collections. Useful for "is there ANY imagery here" — but the result then spans missions with very different resolutions, so read collection on each item before comparing them.
• Collection ids are not portable. Sentinel-2 L2A is sentinel-2-c1-l2a here (Collection 1 reprocessing) and sentinel-2-pre-c1-l2a for the older baseline, while the same mission is sentinel-2-l2a on Planetary Computer and on the Copernicus Data Space. The wrong id returns an empty result, not an error.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "earth-search": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/earth-search/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/earth-search/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1863+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

No MCP client? Call it over HTTP

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/earth_search_collections \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"contains":"sentinel-2","limit":5}'

No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/earth_search_collections. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.

Run it from npm

@pipeworx/mcp-earth-search is a local stdio bridge to the Pipeworx gateway: your MCP client starts it with npx, and it forwards every call to the same https://gateway.pipeworx.io/earth-search/mcp endpoint shown above. It needs network access; there is no offline mode.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "earth-search": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-earth-search"]
    }
  }
}

Without a key it calls anonymously, capped at 50 calls a day. A free account raises that to 200 a day: get a key at https://pipeworx.io/signup and add "env": { "PIPEWORX_API_KEY": "<your key>" } to the server entry. The key is sent as a Bearer token, the same way a hosted connection sends it, so calls are metered and billed exactly as they are there.

It lists only this pack's tools by default. Set PIPEWORX_META_TOOLS=1 to also list ask_pipeworx and the other gateway-wide tools.

Behind an HTTPS proxy: Node's built-in fetch does not read HTTPS_PROXY by default. Newer Node releases honour it when NODE_USE_ENV_PROXY=1 is set; check your Node version's documentation.

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Earth Search data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides
• pipeworx.io

License

MIT