Connecting clients

All examples use https://mealie.example.com — replace it with your own instance URL and use a token from Mealie's Settings → API Tokens.

Claude Code

claude mcp add mealie \
  -e MEALIE_URL=https://mealie.example.com \
  -e MEALIE_API_TOKEN=… \
  -- npx -y @ni-c/mealie-mcp

Claude Desktop

Add the server to claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mealie": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@ni-c/mealie-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "MEALIE_URL": "https://mealie.example.com",
        "MEALIE_API_TOKEN": "…"
      }
    }
  }
}

Codex

Add the server to ~/.codex/config.toml:

[mcp_servers.mealie]
command = "npx"
args = ["-y", "@ni-c/mealie-mcp"]

[mcp_servers.mealie.env]
MEALIE_URL = "https://mealie.example.com"
MEALIE_API_TOKEN = "…"

MCP Inspector

To poke at the tools interactively:

MEALIE_URL=https://mealie.example.com MEALIE_API_TOKEN=… \
  npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector npx -y @ni-c/mealie-mcp

Docker

The image on GHCR runs the same stdio server in a container:

docker run --rm -i \
  -e MEALIE_URL=https://mealie.example.com \
  -e MEALIE_API_TOKEN=… \
  ghcr.io/ni-c/mealie-mcp

For an MCP client config, use docker as the command:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mealie": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run", "--rm", "-i",
        "-e", "MEALIE_URL=https://mealie.example.com",
        "-e", "MEALIE_API_TOKEN=…",
        "ghcr.io/ni-c/mealie-mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Through mcp-hub

mcp-hub serves many stdio MCP servers from one container behind a single HTTPS endpoint, so mealie-mcp can be reached from clients that cannot spawn a local process — ChatGPT connectors, Claude on the web, Cursor — without a container, a hostname and an OAuth stack of its own.

Its /config/mcp.json uses Claude Code's format, so the entry is the one you already have, with the hub's own filter alongside:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mealie": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@ni-c/mealie-mcp"],
      "env": { "MEALIE_ALLOW_TOOLS": "essential" },
      "denyTools": ["delete_*"]
    }
  }
}

allowTools and denyTools are the hub's own per-server filter and take exact tool names or list_* prefixes — the same syntax as the two environment variables, so a list moves between them verbatim. What does not move is essential: that preset is a mealie-mcp feature and belongs in env as shown. "allowTools": ["essential"] would be a name the hub cannot resolve.

The two compose, and it is worth knowing which does what: the server registers what its environment variables allow, and the hub exposes what its arrays allow. Filtering in the server is the tighter of the two — the tool is never built.

Register https://your-host/mealie/mcp as a connector and you get this server alone. Register the hub's /hub endpoint instead and you reach every server behind it through six meta-tools, which is the answer worth having once you run several of these at once.