Tandoor Recipes MCP
A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that gives LLM agents full read/write access to a Tandoor Recipes instance — recipes, meal plans, ingredients, shopping lists, cook logs, nutrition, and AI-powered URL/image imports.
Turn "plan the week and make me a grocery list" into one prompt.
Why this server
- Full Tandoor API coverage — 100+ typed tools spanning recipes, meal plans, ingredients, steps, shopping lists, cook logs, recipe books, foods, units, keywords, supermarket categories, property types / nutrition, custom filters, unit conversions, automations, user files, user prefs, activity logs.
- Resources + Prompts, not just tools — read-only subscribable resources like
tandoor://meal-plan/this-week and tandoor://pantry/on-hand, plus ready-made prompts (plan_week, grocery_list_for_plan, what_can_i_make_tonight). Most Tandoor MCP forks ship tools only.
- Slim-by-default responses — a full recipe GET shrinks from ~20k characters to ~2k by stripping substitute trees, readonly timestamps, image URLs, etc. Pass
format: "full" anywhere for the raw Tandoor response.
- 3-stage URL import with a real fallback — tries Tandoor's native scraper first, then extracts schema.org JSON-LD from the page ourselves (works when Tandoor can't reach the URL or doesn't support the site), with an optional stub-on-failure escape hatch.
- AI import from images / PDFs — multipart upload to Tandoor's
ai-import/ endpoint, saves the parsed recipe.
- Validated inputs — every tool has a Zod input schema; invalid calls are rejected at the MCP boundary before reaching the handler.
- Transport-safe — retries with jittered backoff on 429 / 5xx, redacts your bearer token from error messages, reads response bodies exactly once (no "Body is unusable" footguns).
structuredContent + text — clients that support structured output skip a JSON re-parse round-trip; older clients still get text content.
Install
npm install -g @cliftonz/tandoor-recipes-mcp
Or npx without installing:
npx -y @cliftonz/tandoor-recipes-mcp
Configure
- In Tandoor: Settings → API Tokens → Create new token.
- Point your MCP client at the server.
Claude Code — one-shot plugin install
/plugin marketplace add Cliftonz/tandoor-recipe-mcp
/plugin install tandoor-recipes-mcp@cliftonz-tandoor
Claude Code prompts you for TANDOOR_URL and TANDOOR_TOKEN on install and stores the token securely. No mcpServers JSON editing needed.
Claude Desktop / Claude Code — manual config
{
"mcpServers": {
"tandoor": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "@cliftonz/tandoor-recipes-mcp"],
"env": {
"TANDOOR_URL": "https://your-tandoor-instance.com",
"TANDOOR_TOKEN": "your-api-token",
"TANDOOR_MCP_PROFILE": "full"
}
}
}
}
Recommended Claude Code permissions
The repo ships a .claude/settings.json that auto-allows read tools and prompts for everything else. Copy these into your own project's .claude/settings.json to reduce permission friction:
{
"permissions": {
"allow": [
"mcp__tandoor__list_*",
"mcp__tandoor__get_*"
],
"ask": [
"mcp__tandoor__create_*",
"mcp__tandoor__update_*",
"mcp__tandoor__delete_*",
"mcp__tandoor__merge_*"
]
}
}
Environment variables
| Var | Required | Default | Purpose |
|---|
TANDOOR_URL | ✅ | — | Base URL of your Tandoor instance |
TANDOOR_TOKEN | ✅ | — | API token with write access |
TANDOOR_MCP_PROFILE | — | full | basic exposes core tools only (~40); full includes everything (~100) |
TANDOOR_MCP_INCLUDE_ONLY | — | — | Comma-separated allowlist (glob * supported). E.g. list_*,get_*,create_meal_plan |
TANDOOR_MCP_EXCLUDE | — | — | Comma-separated denylist. E.g. merge_*,delete_* to hide destructive tools |
TANDOOR_MCP_LOG | — | — | Stderr trace mode. request, response, error, all, or comma list. Bearer token redacted. |
The basic profile is useful when context size matters — every MCP client loads every tool schema into the model's context on startup. INCLUDE_ONLY and EXCLUDE compose on top of the profile for finer control (e.g. "give me only read tools" or "hide destructive ops from this agent").
Example conversations
Plan the week + generate a grocery list: