purdue-mcp

One MCP server for all public, real-time Purdue University data — dining menus, live gym occupancy, the course catalog, bus times, campus events, student orgs, library hours, athletics, news, and weather. Point any MCP client (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, …) at it and ask "what's for dinner at Wiley", "how busy is the CoRec", or "when's the next bus from the PMU".

29 tools across 13 public sources.

Everything it reads is public and unauthenticated. It never touches a student account, grades, schedules, bursar records, or anything behind a Purdue login.

Unofficial and community-run. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by Purdue University.

Install

Claude Code

claude mcp add purdue -s user -- npx -y purdue-mcp@latest

Codex CLI

codex mcp add purdue -- npx -y purdue-mcp@latest

Cursor / Claude Desktop / Windsurf — merge into the client's MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "purdue": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "purdue-mcp@latest"]
    }
  }
}

The @latest tag re-resolves the newest version on every launch, so it stays current on its own. Needs Node 20+. No API key, no account, no auth.

Config paths, VS Code, offline/global install, and troubleshooting are in install.md.

Let an agent install it

Paste this into any coding agent:

Install the purdue-mcp MCP server for me — public real-time Purdue University data (dining menus, live gym occupancy, courses, bus times, events, athletics, library hours, weather). On npm as purdue-mcp, needs Node 20+, no API key. Detect my MCP client and register it with npx -y purdue-mcp@latest as the command, using the @latest tag so it stays current. Then verify it connects and tell me which tools it exposes. Full instructions: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sharziki/purdue-mcp/main/install.md

Or run from source

git clone https://github.com/sharziki/purdue-mcp && cd purdue-mcp
npm install && npm run build

Tools

Dining — Purdue HFS dining API

Tool	What it answers
dining_locations	Every dining court / Quick Bites / On-the-GO!, open right now or next meal time
dining_menu	Full menu for a location and date, by meal and station, with vegan/vegetarian/allergen filters
dining_find_item	"Who's serving chicken tenders today?" — searches every dining court at once
dining_item_nutrition	Full nutrition panel for any menu item
dining_line_length	Crowdsourced live line-length reports (populated around peak meal hours)

Registration — live seats (Purdue Banner)

Tool	What it answers
course_availability	How many seats are actually open right now in each section, with waitlists, CRNs, meeting times, instructors
section_details	Seats, waitlist, prerequisites, and major/level restrictions for one CRN — "why can't I register for this"
banner_terms	Which terms are open for registration vs. view-only

Academics — Purdue.io course catalog

Tool	What it answers
list_terms	Term codes and date ranges, newest first
list_subjects	Every subject code (CS, MA, ENGR, …)
search_courses	Courses by subject, number, or title keyword — with descriptions and credit hours
course_sections	CRNs, section types, meeting days/times, rooms, and instructors for a term
find_building	Resolve a building code, e.g. LWSN → Lawson Computer Science Bldg

Campus life

Tool	What it answers
search_events	Official university calendar — lectures, athletics, career fairs, deadlines
search_student_orgs	~1,200 registered student organizations on BoilerLink
search_club_events	Upcoming club events: callouts, socials, meetings
reddit_purdue	What students are actually talking about on r/Purdue (unofficial)
purdue_exponent	Purdue Exponent student newspaper — campus reporting, editorially independent

Facilities

Tool	What it answers
recwell_occupancy	Live headcount and % capacity for all 37 counted RecWell spaces — "how busy is the CoRec right now"
library_hours	Today's hours and open/closed status for every library, or the full week

Athletics

Tool	What it answers
athletics_sports	Every varsity team and its current season schedule
athletics_schedule	Full season for one team — opponents, rankings, home/away, venue, results
athletics_upcoming	Next Boilermaker games across all sports, soonest first

Getting around

Tool	What it answers
bus_routes	Every CityBus route serving campus and Greater Lafayette
bus_stops	Find stops by name, or the stops nearest a lat/lon
bus_next_departures	Next scheduled departures from a stop, with minutes-until

News and deadlines

Tool	What it answers
purdue_news	Official newsroom articles, searchable
academic_calendar	First day of classes, breaks, finals week, add/drop deadlines, exam scheduling

Environment

Tool	What it answers
campus_weather	Current conditions, forecast, and active NWS alerts for West Lafayette

Dates default to today in the campus timezone (America/Indiana/Indianapolis), so the server gives the right answer no matter where it runs.

Data sources

Source	Endpoint	Notes
Purdue Dining (HFS)	api.hfs.purdue.edu/menus/v2	Official, public, unauthenticated
Purdue Banner	selfservice.mypurdue.purdue.edu/prod	Public class search — no login. Authoritative for seats/waitlist/prereqs. HTML, so parsing is version-sensitive.
Purdue.io	api.purdue.io/odata	Community-run open-source catalog mirror (Purdue-io/PurdueApi)
Purdue Events	events.purdue.edu/api/2	Localist public API
BoilerLink	purdue.campuslabs.com/engage/api/discovery	Anthology Engage public discovery API
Purdue RecWell	goboardapi.azurewebsites.net (Connect2)	Live occupancy counters; account key is the one Purdue's own public widget ships
Purdue Libraries	calendar.lib.purdue.edu	Springshare LibCal public hours endpoints
Purdue Athletics	purduesports.com/website-api	Official athletics site's public JSON API
Purdue Newsroom / Registrar	purdue.edu/{newsroom,registrar}/wp-json	WordPress REST API
CityBus	bus.gocitybus.com GTFS	Static schedule feed; no public real-time feed exists
r/Purdue	reddit.com/r/Purdue/.rss	Unofficial student chatter
Purdue Exponent	purdueexponent.org RSS	Independent student newspaper
NOAA / NWS	api.weather.gov	Public federal API

Responses are cached in-process with short TTLs (30s–24h depending on how fast the data moves) to stay a polite client. Nothing is persisted to disk.

Ruled out (investigated, no public source)

• Laundry machine availability — Purdue moved residence-hall laundry to CSCPay Mobile, which has no public web status page. The old washalertweb host the community app scraped no longer resolves.
• Real-time bus positions — CityBus publishes GTFS static only. No GTFS-Realtime feed is listed on Transitland or the Mobility Database, and MyRide's backend is not public. bus_next_departures returns timetable times.
• Parking garage availability — Purdue Parking publishes no live space counts.
• Grades, personal schedules, bursar — behind the myPurdue login. Out of scope by design.
• Library study-room availability — LibCal's spaces API requires OAuth credentials the library would have to issue.
• Laundry (again) — CSCPay has no public read API of any kind.

Seat availability was on this list — it turned out Banner's class search needs no login, so course_availability now covers it.

Adding a source

Each source is one file in src/sources/ exporting a registerX(server) that calls server.registerTool(...). Register it in src/index.ts. Use getJSON() from src/lib/http.ts so you inherit the timeout, User-Agent, and cache.

Rules of the road:

1. Public data only. Nothing that needs a Purdue login, and nothing about a specific individual.
2. Verify the endpoint is live before shipping it — npm run smoke hits every real upstream and is the test suite.
3. Be a polite client. Sensible cache TTL, no tight polling.

npm run build
npm run smoke   # live end-to-end check of all tools

License

MIT