Italian Travel Search MCP Server

Italian Travel Search

An unofficial, read-only TypeScript service for Italian coach searches and local NeTEx rail timetables through HTTP and Model Context Protocol interfaces.

The project hides provider-specific station catalogs, request formats, fare structures, and multi-leg responses behind one shared application core. It never performs login, booking, seat selection, or payment operations.

[!IMPORTANT] This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Itabus, Autoservizi Salemi, Autolinee Federico, MarinoBus, or FlixBus. Provider names and trademarks belong to their owners. Before enabling a live adapter, confirm that your use complies with the provider's terms, applicable law, and any required authorization. This repository does not grant data-extraction or redistribution rights.

Features

• One response model for locations and journeys across different booking platforms.
• Live adapters for five operators.
• Partial results when one provider fails and another succeeds.
• MCP over local stdio or stateless Streamable HTTP at /mcp, with backward-compatible bus tools and separate rail tools.
• Scheduled Trenitalia and Italo searches from operator datasets installed by the deployer.
• Official links for continuing a search manually on provider sites.
• Structured, provider-scoped errors instead of leaked upstream responses.
• Finite upstream request timeouts and bounded asynchronous quote polling.
• One-hour location caches and 60-second journey caches.
• Per-client in-memory rate limiting at 60 requests per minute.
• Offline tests with synthetic fixtures; the test suite never contacts provider sites.
• A small runtime dependency surface: the official MCP SDK, Zod, and the streaming saxes parser.

Supported providers

Provider behavior and the evidence behind each integration are recorded in Provider research.

Rail schedule support uses compact local caches refreshed from Italian NAP NeTEx with npm run build && npm run rail:update. Optional TRENITALIA_NETEX_PATH and ITALO_NETEX_PATH variables override their paths. Trenitalia and Italo prices, ViaggiaTreno live data, and Italo live boards/standalone status are enabled. Italo quote searches use an anonymous temporary planning session and clean it up best-effort.

Requirements

• Node.js 22.18 or newer
• npm

Quick start

git clone https://github.com/Alexxanddr/italian-travel-search.git
cd italian-travel-search
npm install
cp .env.example .env
npm start

The server listens on http://127.0.0.1:3000 by default.

curl http://127.0.0.1:3000/health
curl http://127.0.0.1:3000/providers
curl http://127.0.0.1:3000/train-providers
curl 'http://127.0.0.1:3000/locations?query=Roma&provider=marinobus'

For journey searches, use a real future date:

curl 'http://127.0.0.1:3000/journeys?origin=Roma&destination=Milano&date=YYYY-MM-DD&adults=1&children=0&provider=marinobus'

YYYY-MM-DD is a placeholder and must be replaced before running the command.

HTTP interface

/locations and /journeys accept an optional provider parameter. Without it, all providers are queried independently and successful data is preserved alongside provider-scoped errors.

The complete contract is split into the Bus API and Train API, with shared behavior indexed in HTTP API.

MCP server

The simplest MCP configuration runs the published package directly with npx:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "italian-travel-search": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "italian-travel-search@latest"]
    }
  }
}

Alternatively, build and start the local stdio server:

npm run build
npm run mcp:built

The existing list_providers, search_locations, and search_journeys bus tools are unchanged. Rail adds list_train_providers, search_train_locations, search_train_journeys, get_train_status, and get_station_board. Trenitalia and Italo price and live adapters are enabled; Italo live tools retain date-unverified semantics.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "italian-travel-search": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/italian-travel-search/dist/mcp/stdio.js"]
    }
  }
}

For a container or remote MCPHub deployment, start the HTTP process and point the client to http://italian-travel-search:3000/mcp. The container image is ghcr.io/alexxanddr/italian-travel-search:latest; populate the two timetable paths with node dist/rail/update.js before starting it.

See MCP interface for the authoritative tool contract, limits, errors, and development command.

Architecture

The application has four layers:

1. HTTP and MCP adapters validate their transport-specific requests;
2. shared validation and SearchService orchestrate searches and partial results;
3. each provider adapter translates a remote protocol into domain types;
4. the domain module owns normalized data and error contracts.

Provider adapters implement one shared interface, so callers do not know whether a result came from Itabus Demandware or an Albatross tenant. See Architecture for modules, seams, data flow, caches, and test strategy.

Development

npm run dev
npm run mcp
npm run check

npm run check runs the complete offline test suite, TypeScript type checking, and the configured lint check. To add an operator, follow Adding a provider; do not infer a new integration from HTML alone or copy credentials into fixtures.

Deployment

The default server deliberately binds to loopback and keeps rate-limit and cache state in process memory. Read Operations before placing it behind a reverse proxy or running multiple replicas.

Project documentation

• HTTP API — shared behavior and error contract.
• Bus API — bus providers, locations, journeys, and examples.
• Train API — rail schedules, live prices/status, provenance, and examples.
• MCP interface — authoritative tools, results, limits, and transport contract.
• Architecture — modules, seams, flows, and design decisions.
• Adding a provider — research, implementation, and verification checklist.
• Operations — configuration, deployment constraints, and failure handling.
• Provider research — primary-source evidence and known limitations.
• Glossary — stable project terminology.
• Contributing — local workflow and pull-request expectations.
• Security policy — private vulnerability reporting and supported versions.
• Agent instructions — compact routing instructions for coding agents.

Scope and limitations

• Searches are one-way only.
• Availability is a provider-reported signal, not a seat or price guarantee.
• Prices and schedules can change between search and purchase; rail schedule results expose dataset validity and publication metadata.
• Caches and rate limits reset when the process restarts and are not shared across replicas.
• Upstream interfaces are unofficial and can change without notice.
• Both interfaces intentionally exclude accounts, bookings, payments, and CAPTCHA handling.

Always complete and confirm a purchase on the official provider site linked by bookingUrl.

Contributing and security

Contributions are welcome; start with CONTRIBUTING.md. Report vulnerabilities privately according to SECURITY.md, not through a public issue.

License

Source code is available under the MIT License. The license covers this repository's code, not third-party data, provider trademarks, or access rights to upstream systems.