urdb-mcp is an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server whose goal is to connect URDB's capabilities to AI assistants. URDB itself is a product integrity database that tracks integrity scores, downgrades, shrinkflation, warranty reductions and enshittification events and changes for consumer products.
Main capabilities:
- Calculators: provides 76 electronics, hardware and firmware calculators, distributed across seven categories, with tool names uniformly as calc_<name>. Example questions include current-limiting resistor selection for a blue LED at 5V, all valid CAN bit timings for 500 kbit/s at a 40 MHz clock, the trace width required for 3A current in the outer layer with a 20°C temperature rise, struct padding decoding for a 32-bit target, whether 1000 km is realistic at LoRa SF12, etc. Each calculator returns the answer, machine-readable values, the complete derivation process, and a link to the https://urdb.io/tools/<name> web tool.
- Product integrity data: can query product integrity scores, downgrades, shrinkflation, warranty reductions and enshittification events. Example questions include which laptops have the highest integrity scores, whether KitchenAid stand mixers get worse year over year, etc.
How to use:
- Get an API key at urdb.io/settings/api-keys (a free tier is available).
- Add the server to an MCP host. The Claude Desktop configuration file is located at ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on macOS or %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json on Windows.
- Restart the host.
Architecture and metering: This package is a lightweight stdio→HTTPS proxy for https://urdb.io/api/v1 , and contains no calculation logic; the catalog and each tool's JSON Schema are fetched from /api/v1/tools at server startup. Therefore, newly added URDB calculators will appear after the next restart, and fixes arrive through deployment rather than npm update. If the API is unreachable, the server will still start and provide product tools, and retry the catalog on the next tools/list. Call tools/list to see the current tool set; the calculator catalog is fetched from the server at runtime, so it can grow without updating the package. Calculators and product data are metered separately, and the free tier allows 1000 calculator calls per day.
Accuracy and limitations: Calculators follow published standards where they exist, for example IPC-2221 and IPC-2141 for trace geometry, IEC 60063 for E series, IEC 60127 for fuses, ISO 11898-1 for CAN, and IEEE 754 for floating point. When a result is an extrapolation rather than a measurement, the tool states this explicitly. All capabilities are accessible via ordinary HTTP, and full documentation is at urdb.io/api.
