cox-automotive-mcp

First MCP server for the auto-dealership vertical. Lets Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client read dealer accounts, look up manufacturer incentives, and manage inventory listings through the Cox Automotive / Dealer Developer Portal API.

Cox Automotive is the umbrella for the auto-dealership ecosystem — Dealer.com (websites + digital marketing), vAuto (inventory + pricing), Dealertrack (DMS + financing), VinSolutions (CRM), and more. This MCP covers the publicly-documented Dealer Developer Portal API surface (Accounts, Incentives, Inventory). Other Cox brands expose additional partner-gated APIs that will be added as their surfaces become publicly documented.

Why this exists

17,000+ US auto dealerships depend on Cox Automotive for daily operations. There's no MCP for the vertical. Existing AI tooling targets generic CRMs (HubSpot, Salesforce) that dealers don't run. This is the first.

12 tools

Tool	What it does
health_check	Verify COX_AUTO_API_KEY works.
list_accounts	Paginated list of dealer accounts the API key can access.
iter_accounts	Flat list of all accounts (auto-paginates).
get_account	One dealer account by id.
list_incentives	Paginated incentives (rebates, finance offers) for an account.
get_incentive	One incentive by id within an account.
search_incentives	Filter incentives by vehicle make/model/year.
list_inventory	Paginated vehicles in a dealer's inventory.
iter_inventory	Flat list of all inventory vehicles (auto-paginates).
get_vehicle	One vehicle listing by id.
create_vehicle	Add a vehicle to inventory.
update_vehicle	Update fields on a vehicle (price, mileage, photos, status).
delete_vehicle	Remove a vehicle from inventory.
search_inventory	Filter inventory by make/model/year/price range.

Install

pip install cox-automotive-mcp

Or from source:

git clone https://github.com/sanjibani/cox-automotive-mcp
cd cox-automotive-mcp
pip install -e ".[dev]"

Configure

export COX_AUTO_API_KEY=<your-dealer-developer-portal-api-key>

Get your API key by registering at https://developer.inv.dealer.com (My Account → Register). Cox Automotive's Mashery-backed API uses header-based API keys.

Optional overrides:

• COX_AUTO_BASE_URL — change the API base (sandbox, regional)
• COX_AUTO_AUDIT_LOG — JSONL audit log file path (defaults to stderr)

Run

cox_automotive_mcp

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

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "cox-automotive": {
      "command": "cox_automotive_mcp",
      "env": {
        "COX_AUTO_API_KEY": "your-key-here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Example prompts

Once connected to your MCP client:

• "Show me every dealer account this API key has access to."
• "What Honda Civic 2024 incentives are available for dealer 1042?"
• "List all vehicles under $25,000 in dealer 1042's inventory."
• "Add this 2023 Toyota Camry I just took in: VIN 4T1B11HK5KU123456, 18,500 miles, asking $24,995, stock number P1042-12."
• "Vehicle 9001 just had new photos taken — update the photo URL to https://cdn.example.com/9001-v2.jpg."
• "Vehicle 9017 sold. Remove it from inventory."

Architecture

Built on the mcp-vertical-template industry-leading patterns:

• Shared httpx.AsyncClient with connection pooling (100 max, 20 keepalive) + transport-level retries
• Typed exception hierarchy (CoxAutomotiveAuthError, RateLimitError, NotFoundError, APIError, ConnectionError) with structured fields (http_status, error_code, request_id, retry_after, body)
• Application-level retry with exponential backoff + full jitter, honoring Retry-After
• Auto-paginating iterators (iter_accounts, iter_inventory, iter_incentives) that walk the page/pageSize cursor without caller math
• isError-compliance — every MCP tool raises on failure so FastMCP sets isError: true on the wire (Blackwell Systems audit pattern; agents can't retry indefinitely on errors they can't see)
• JSONL audit logging to stderr (or COX_AUTO_AUDIT_LOG file) — SOC2 baseline for B2B procurement
• Property-based tests (Hypothesis) for JSON round-trips
• Strict mypy + full ruff rule set + pytest with respx HTTP mocking

Development

git clone https://github.com/sanjibani/cox-automotive-mcp
cd cox-automotive-mcp
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest                    # unit + integration mocks
ruff check src tests      # lint
ruff format --check src tests  # format
mypy src                  # strict type-check

Test coverage is enforced at 80% via pytest --cov.

Related MCPs

This is part of a portfolio of vertical MCP servers from the same author. See https://github.com/sanjibani?q=-mcp for the full list, including legal (PracticePanther), insurance (HawkSoft), dental (Open Dental), veterinary (ezyVet), home service (Jobber), church / nonprofit (Realm ACS), and the shared scaffolding template.

For custom MCP server engagements, see https://sanjibani.github.io/mcp-services/.

License

MIT — Sanjibani Choudhury schoudhury1991@gmail.com