Apache Health MCP

This repo contains a small MCP server for querying the Apache Incubator health reports from tools/health/reports.

It parses the Markdown report format used by Apache's health tooling and exposes MCP tools for:

• listing available podling reports
• searching podling names
• getting a parsed summary for one podling
• returning the raw Markdown report
• returning metrics for one specific window
• comparing one podling across two or three windows
• listing supported metrics and windows
• ranking podlings by a metric within a window like 3m, 6m, or 12m

Expected input

Point the server at a local directory containing Markdown files like:

reports/
  Amoro.md
  Iggy.md
  ...

The parser is designed around the current Apache report structure, especially the ## Window Details section.

Install

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
python3 -m pip install .

For local development:

make install-dev

Run

health-mcp --reports-dir /path/to/incubator/tools/health/reports

The server uses stdio, so it is intended to be launched by an MCP client.

For local development without installing first, you can still launch the stdio server directly:

python3 server.py

The package also keeps apache-health-mcp as a backwards-compatible command alias.

Claude Desktop

Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json and add:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apache-health": {
      "command": "health-mcp",
      "args": [
        "--reports-dir",
        "/path/to/incubator/tools/health/reports"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Then restart Claude Desktop. If you installed into a virtual environment that is not on your PATH, use the absolute path to that environment's health-mcp command.

MCP tools

health_overview Returns the reports directory, report count, podling list, and latest generated date.

list_podlings Returns the podling names available in the reports directory.

search_podlings Searches podling names by case-insensitive substring with an optional result limit.

get_report_summary Returns parsed window metrics for a single podling.

get_report_markdown Returns the raw Markdown for a single podling report.

get_window_metrics Returns metrics for one podling and one window such as 3m, 6m, 12m, or to-date, including normalized trend words like up, down, and flat under trends.

compare_windows Returns side-by-side metrics for one podling across two or three windows, including normalized trend words under each window's trends.

query_metric_rankings Ranks podlings by a parsed metric such as commits, prs_merged, dev_messages, bus50, or median_merge_days.

list_metrics Returns the supported metric names and available windows for querying.

Usage Examples

These examples show the kinds of questions a user can ask an MCP client connected to this server.

Reviewing A Report Snapshot

• "What Apache Incubator health reports are available in this checkout?"
• "How many podling health reports do we have, and when were they generated?"
• "Which podlings have health reports I can query?"
• "What health metrics and report windows can I ask about?"

Investigating One Podling

• "Show me the health summary for Amoro."
• "What does the latest health report say about Iggy?"
• "Find podlings with names containing 'stream' and summarize the best match."
• "For this podling, show the recent 3-month health metrics."
• "Show me the original Markdown report for Amoro so I can check the source."

Comparing Trends Across Windows

• "Compare Amoro's 3-month, 6-month, and 12-month activity."
• "Is Iggy's development activity improving or slowing down?"
• "Compare recent mailing-list activity with the longer-term trend for this podling."
• "Has this podling's PR merge activity changed between the 3-month and 12-month windows?"
• "Is the bus factor for this podling getting better or worse across the report windows?"

Finding Podlings By Activity Signal

• "Which podlings had the most dev-list messages in the last 3 months?"
• "Show me podlings with no commits in the last 3 months."
• "Which podlings have the longest median PR merge time?"
• "Rank podlings by merged PRs over the 6-month window."
• "Find podlings with low reviewer diversity in the recent report window."

Preparing A Human Review Queue

• "Give me a short list of podlings that may need mentor attention based on recent activity."
• "Which podlings look quiet across commits, PRs, and dev-list messages?"
• "Find podlings with low recent activity and compare them against their 12-month trend."
• "Which podlings should I manually review for bus-factor or reviewer-diversity concerns?"

Development

Common tasks are available through make:

make format
make lint
make typecheck
make test
make coverage
make check

Notes

• This server queries already-generated report files. It does not run Apache's upstream collection script.
• The workspace here did not include a local reports/ directory, so the server is built to accept any local clone or copied snapshot of Apache's reports directory.