Configuration
See the environment variable reference for the full table.
Getting a token
Create the token in Mealie under Settings → API Tokens. The token acts as the user who created it and inherits that user's group, household and permission flags — there are no finer-grained scopes in Mealie.
Give the server a dedicated, non-admin user. The admin-only surface is not exposed by any tool here, but a token minted from an admin account still carries those rights if anything else ever reaches the API with it. A sensible user for this server has canOrganize (needed for tags, categories, foods and units) and neither canManage nor canInvite.
Once read, the token is deleted from the process environment, so child processes cannot pick it up out of /proc/<pid>/environ.
Required variables
| Variable | Description |
|---|---|
MEALIE_URL | Base URL of the instance, e.g. https://mealie.example.com |
MEALIE_API_TOKEN | Token from Settings → API Tokens; it acts as the user who created it. |
A missing credential is a warning, not a fatal error: the server still completes the MCP handshake and answers tools/list, and every actual call fails with setup instructions. A malformed MEALIE_URL exits immediately — that one could send the token to the wrong host. URLs with embedded credentials, a query string or a fragment are rejected for the same reason.
Optional variables
| Variable | Description |
|---|---|
MEALIE_READ_ONLY | Exactly true registers the 17 read tools only |
MEALIE_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE | e.g. de-DE; localises unit and label names |
MEALIE_INSECURE_TLS | Exactly true accepts a self-signed certificate, scoped to this connection |
Booleans compare against the literal string true
MEALIE_READ_ONLY=1, yes or True all leave the flag off. A typo fails off, never on — check the startup line on stderr, which reports the mode in effect.
TLS
Prefer https://. Using plain http:// to a non-local host prints a warning: the API token would travel unencrypted.
If the instance uses a self-signed certificate, MEALIE_INSECURE_TLS=true disables certificate verification for this connection only — it does not touch NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED or affect any other TLS connection the process makes.
Localisation
MEALIE_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE (e.g. de-DE) is sent as the accept-language header, which Mealie honours on nearly every endpoint. It localises unit names, label names and validation messages. Unset, the choice is left to the server default.