Skydex in your AI assistant: a public MCP server
Skydex now runs a public MCP server. If your AI assistant supports MCP connectors (Claude, Claude Code, ChatGPT, Cursor and a growing list of others), you can connect it to Skydex and ask questions that need our data. Setup and the full list of tools are on a new page: Skydex in AI assistants.
What it is
MCP, the Model Context Protocol, is how an assistant reaches an application. We run a server with a set of tools, and your assistant calls them when a question needs them. The address is https://skydex.online/api/mcp. It is free, needs no account and no key, and only reads.
What you can ask
The tools cover the same ground as the public pages of the site:
- What the Skydex network hears right now near any point, aircraft or ships, nearest first. "What is flying over Hamburg right now?" works the way you would expect, within the coverage of our receivers.
- Aircraft types with what the network heard of them: how many different airframes, on how many airframe-days, by how many stations.
- Airports with the airline flights our receivers heard heading to or from them over the last 30 days.
- Ships by MMSI, airframes by hex, and a search across the whole directory.
- The receiver network itself: stations ranked by Signal, one station's numbers, and totals for the live globe.
- How to feed Skydex from your own receiver, the same answers as on the feeder page.
Every answer carries a link to the Skydex page it came from, so the assistant can show you the source.
What it does not show
The privacy rules are the same as on the site. Privately flown aircraft and pleasure boats appear only as counts. Receivers are placed at region level, never at the antenna. The assistant cannot see accounts or messages.
Your question stays with your assistant. Skydex receives only the tool call: its name, its arguments (a type code, a pair of coordinates) and when it came. We record those, the app that called and a keyed hash of the address, so we can count use and keep the server healthy, and we delete the raw rows after 90 days. There is a limit of 30 calls a minute per address, which a normal conversation does not reach.
How to connect
In Claude Code it is one command:
claude mcp add --transport http skydex https://skydex.online/api/mcpIn claude.ai and ChatGPT you add a custom connector in the settings with the same address. The setup page has the steps for each client, and a Markdown version you can paste straight into the assistant and ask it to help. Claude Code can add the server by itself; in the web apps only you can add a connector, so the assistant will walk you through it.
What is next
Feeders asked for a quicker way to check their own receivers. The next step is a set of tools that need a sign-in: your stations, their health and why one went quiet, read from the same data as your station pages. If you try the server and something is missing or answers wrong, write to [email protected] with the question you asked.