io.github.esreddy2Published by GitHub account esreddy2v2.0.0Updated Oct 29, 2026
Menus, traits, allergens, nutrition and hours of the ten University of Michigan dining halls.
Reads live University of Michigan dining hall menus, hours, dish traits, allergens and nutrition for an assistant.
Web executable via Streamable HTTP. Remote servers run from the web runtime once configured in a workspace.
Paste this prompt into Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or another agent — or into SourceWeft chat. The agent reads this server's install guide, shows you its publisher, endpoint and sign-in, and adds it to your client once you agree. Keys never go into a command.
Read https://sourceweft.com/mcp/io.github.esreddy2%2Fumich-dining-mcp/install.md and connect the MCP server it describes to my client. Before changing any config, show me its publisher, endpoint and sign-in method and wait for my OK. Never put an API key in a command or in a file I would commit; ask me where it should come from.Add this to your client's mcpServers config.
{
"mcpServers": {
"umich-dining": {
"type": "http",
"url": "https://umich-dining-mcp.duckdns.org/mcp"
}
}
}An MCP server for the dining halls of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. It answers what is being served, which dishes are vegan or halal, what a dish contains, how many calories it has, and when each hall is open.
Every answer is read live from dining.umich.edu. Pages are kept in memory for a few minutes so that ten questions cost one visit, but nothing is written to disk and no menu is mirrored.
or run it without installing anything:
~/.cursor/mcp.json:
.vscode/mcp.json:
Any other client that starts MCP servers over stdio takes the same mcpServers entry as
Cursor, with npx -y umich-dining-mcp as the command.
The rows of search_dishes and filter_dishes carry small integers instead of names, and a
key block at the top of the response maps every code back to its slug. The key lists only
what that response uses. The codes are frozen for the life of the contract.
A row is an array; its fixed positions are named in each tool description and the
variable nutrient tail is carried once per response as nutrients. The member names of a
named row are two and a half times the data of the row, repeated on every row: a named row
cost 216 bytes, an array row costs 72.
mhealthyTier is 1 (Nutrient Dense Low) to 5 (Nutrient Dense High). The scale is fixed
and described in the tool descriptions and in umich://taxonomy.carbonFootprint) only when the call constrains it with
max_carbon or sorts by carbonFootprint; otherwise it is left out to keep the row small.traits array carries the six boolean traits only; the density tier is lifted into
its own numeric field.units map gives the unit of every nutrient the response returns. A micronutrient
is an amount like every other nutrient: the site publishes the percent of the Daily
Value, and the row carries the amount that percent stands for — 15 %DV of an 18 mg
Daily Value of iron is 2.7 in mg. The percent is still available under its own name,
%DV, in a threshold.limit takes the first of them: the default is 50 rows, and the answer says how many
matched and how to see the rest.include_nutrients — the sodium has nothing
that makes it more interesting than the protein. A nutrient a filter constrained is
always returned, whether or not it was asked for.date; a range response carries dateRange and each row
carries the dates it appeared on.null, never as zero. A trace or a
< value is not a value at all.get_menu and the sweep tools return the same compact row, so a row means the same thing
wherever it is read. get_item_nutrition is the tool that returns the raw nutrition panel,
of one dish.
A whole menu is far smaller this way: the menu of South Quad went from 60,266 bytes to
8,817, and the menu of Bursley from 42,141 to 6,573. The panel of a single dish is one
call to get_item_nutrition.
The id is what get_menu, get_hours and search_dishes expect. The code of a hall is
its position in this list, counted from one.
The site publishes menus from three days ago to fourteen days ahead. Outside that range the site does not answer with an error, it answers with a different day's menu, so a date outside the range is refused before anything is fetched, with a message that names the range the site offers. When the page states which day it rendered, that day is compared with the one you asked for and a mismatch is an error rather than a wrong answer.
A range is asked for with from and to; to omitted means the last published day. The
two cannot be combined with date. A range that does not fit in one call is read in
windows with offset; the coverage block of the answer names the offset of the next
window.
Every time the server reports is campus time: the time zone of Ann Arbor,
America/Detroit, which is Eastern Standard Time and Eastern Daylight Time in the summer.
The day the site publishes, the mealtimes, and the "today" of a cache entry are all read in
that zone.
The zone of the machine the server runs on does not matter. A server in Chicago and a server
in UTC answer the same question the same way, and the test suite checks that by running the
meal selection under several host zones. Set UMICH_DINING_TIMEZONE only to point the
server at a mirror of the site in another zone.
A constraint on a nutrient excludes the dishes that publish no value for it: an unknown value is never a zero.
A range query reads one page per hall per day, and the site is fetched at most two pages a
second. A query that needs more upstream pages than UMICH_DINING_MAX_RANGE_FETCHES
(default 12) returns the rows it could serve and a coverage block that says how much was
served:
The numbers add up: every page the query asked for was cached, fetched, left pending or
failed. nextOffset is where the rest of the range begins, so a wide range is read in
windows: ask again with offset set to that number.
The persistent cache exists for this: the pages of the published window are kept on disk and warmed in the background, so a range query is usually served without touching the site.
Allergen data is only as good as the site. The menu page flags the allergens the kitchen reported for a dish, but it does not distinguish "contains" from "may contain", there are no ingredient lists, and a missing flag is not an absence of the allergen. The site's own guidance is: "Look for the signs posted near each food serving area for a list of menu options with allergens highlighted in red." "Gluten Free" means the dish is made without gluten, not that it is safe for someone with coeliac disease. Dedicated gluten-free pantries exist at South Quad, East Quad, Mosher-Jordan and Bursley.
The caveat is in the description of every tool that returns allergen data and in
umich://taxonomy. A response that carries allergens repeats one line reminding the reader
to resolve the codes; the long caveat is not repeated in every body. No tool ever claims
that a dish is safe.
Two further points about the traits, because the site is careful about them: a vegan dish is reported as vegetarian as well, since the site keeps the two apart, and no other trait implies another (halal does not imply vegetarian, and neither does kosher).
dining.umich.edu is somebody else's website, so the server stays gentle with it:
python-requests/2.32.3 is the one that has been measured to work, while a generic fetch
agent and a headless browser both get 403. It is not the server's real identity, which is
why it is configurable.get_dining_occupancy reports real-time fullness for the halls that carry
sensors (Bursley, East Quad, South Quad, Mosher-Jordan, Twigs at Oxford):
It returns the current count, daily patron flow, total capacity, percent full, and the time of the reading. A hall with no sensor is simply omitted.
Hall names, nutrients, and traits accept short, case-insensitive aliases:
mojo, south, east, lawyers, cook, twigs, wovlerine, ...cals, kcals, carbs, fiber, protein/prot, na/salt, ...gf, veg.Descriptions are unchanged; the server resolves the alias before validating.
Menus, hours, locations, nutrition, and occupancy are read from the U-M dining mobile API, with the public site scraper retained as a fallback. Answers are still read live and cached for a few minutes.
Pull requests are welcome. The test suite, the fixtures and the release process are described in CONTRIBUTING.md.
MIT, see LICENSE.
Source: README.md at commit 7087e0d
List dining halls
List the ten University of Michigan dining halls with their address, phone, e-mail, map link, the service periods published for the requested day, whether they are serving right now, and whether they have a gluten-free pantry. Cafes, markets, bakeries, grills, prices and meal plans are out of scope.
dateGet a dining hall menu
Get the menu of one dining hall: meals, stations and dishes, with each dish's traits (Vegan, Halal, Gluten Free, Nutrient Dense tier, Carbon Footprint tier), allergens and nutrition panel. The date defaults to today; the site publishes menus for today-3 days to today+14 days.
datehallrequiredmealSearch dishes
Search dish names across the dining halls, or within one hall. The match is a case-insensitive substring match on the dish name.
datehalllimitqueryrequiredFilter dishes
Filter the dining hall menus by allergen, trait, nutrient density, carbon footprint and calories. exclude_allergens removes dishes that carry any of the listed allergens; require_traits keeps only dishes that carry every listed trait; min_mhealthy is the lowest acceptable nutrient-density tier (3 = Nutrient Dense Medium or better); max_carbon is the highest acceptable carbon footprint; max_calories and max_sodium_mg are numeric caps that exclude dishes without published values. Allergen data is only as good as the site. The menu page flags the allergens the kitchen reported for a dish, but the data does not distinguish "contains" from "may contain", there are no ingredient lists, and it is not safe to treat a missing flag as an absence of the allergen. The site's own guidance is: "Look for the signs posted near each food serving area for a list of menu options with allergens highlighted in red." The "Gluten Free" trait means the dish is made without gluten, not that it is safe for someone with coeliac disease. Dedicated gluten-free pantries exist only at South Quad, East Quad, Mosher-Jordan and Bursley.
datehalllimitmax_carbonmax_caloriesmin_mhealthymax_sodium_mgrequire_traitsexclude_allergensGet dining hall hours
Get the service periods published for a dining hall on the requested day, together with the hall's regular weekly schedule. Without a hall argument every hall is returned.
datehallFind halls that are open now
Return the dining halls that are serving at the current time, and the ones that are not, with the service periods of today.
Takes no parameters.
Get a dish nutrition panel
Get the full nutrition panel of one dish, including the serving size, calories, the fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrate and protein values and the micronutrients. The dish name is matched case-insensitively; an exact match wins, otherwise a unique substring match is used and an ambiguous name is reported rather than guessed.
datehallrequireditemrequired100% of the applicable checks met
How complete this listing is, computed from the registry entry, the endpoint and public sources. Not a rating of the server and not a statement that it is safe or working today: reachability is a dated check, and no installs or reviews go into the score.
npm install -g umich-dining-mcpnpx -y umich-dining-mcpclaude mcp add umich-dining -- npx -y umich-dining-mcp{ "mcpServers": { "umich-dining": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "umich-dining-mcp"] } }}{ "servers": { "umich-dining": { "type": "stdio", "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "umich-dining-mcp"] } }}What is serving at Bursley for dinner tonight?
Which halls are open right now?
Find vegan dishes at South Quad that do not contain soy.
What are the ingredients of the Oatmeal at Bursley? How many calories?
When is Markley open on Saturday?
Show me dishes with more than 500 mg of sodium.
Which halls serve tiramisu between the 24th and the 26th?{ "key": { "halls": { "1": "bursley" }, "meals": { "3": "Lunch" }, "stations": { "7": "Grill" }, "traits": { "5": "vegan" }, "allergens": { "7": "milk" } }, "units": { "calories": "kcal", "protein": "g" }, "note": "Allergen codes: check key.allergens before reporting; site data is advisory.", "date": "2026-10-21", "matches": [ [1, 3, 7, "Grilled Chicken", [5], [7], 3, 320, "1 Each (113g)", 113, 32] ]}"coverage": { "requested": 30, "cached": 18, "fetchedNow": 12, "pending": 0, "failed": 0, "stale": 0, "offset": 0, "pages": 30, "nextOffset": null }{ "hall": "bursley" }