| FMRS | 71 / 100 · B | 75 / 100 · B |
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| Reliability | 11 / 20 | 10 / 20 |
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| Security and permissions | 14 / 20 | 16 / 20 |
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| Maintenance | 16 / 20 | 18 / 20 |
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| Documentation | 17 / 20 | 17 / 20 |
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| Setup experience | 13 / 20 | 14 / 20 |
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| Best for | - Developers building AI applications that need real geocoding, POI search, and routing data
- Logistics, travel, and site-selection workflows that need offline geometry operations (area, buffers, union/intersect/difference)
- Users on clients with MCP Apps support (Claude Desktop, VS Code Copilot, Claude Code, Goose) who want visual, interactive map output
| - Biomedical researchers
- Clinicians
- AI agents that need efficient access to biomedical literature and data analysis
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| Not for | - Users without a Mapbox account who don't want to obtain an access token
- Fully offline geocoding or routing needs, since most location APIs require live Mapbox connectivity (only the Turf.js geometry tools work offline)
- Fleet-scale optimization with time windows, capacity constraints, or multiple vehicles — the V2 Optimization API needs beta access and isn't registered by default
| - Users needing to write to upstream databases (read-only)
- Users requiring direct access to closed datasets (e.g., COSMIC is not directly integrated)
- Users expecting all advanced features without API keys
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| Required permissions | - Requires a valid Mapbox access token (MAPBOX_ACCESS_TOKEN), supplied as a secret environment variable
- Local stdio deployment needs outbound network access to call Mapbox APIs
- Using the hosted endpoint requires network access to https://mcp.mapbox.com/mcp
| - Requires internet access to query public biomedical APIs
- Optional API keys (NCBI, Semantic Scholar, OpenFDA, etc.) to improve rate limits or unlock features
- Local read/write access for skills, cache, and local study data (e.g., `~/.local/share/biomcp`)
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| Risks and side effects | - A leaked Mapbox access token can be abused, incurring extra API charges or exceeding quota
- Geocoding, search, and directions tools send addresses, coordinates, and routing preferences to Mapbox APIs, subject to Mapbox's privacy policy
- render_map_tool renders an HTML panel via the MCP Apps protocol, which relies on the client's handling of rich content being trustworthy
- The advanced V2 Optimization API ships in the codebase but is unregistered by default, requiring deliberate beta opt-in
| - Upstream API rate limits may affect performance
- Some data sources (e.g., KEGG) have licensing terms that restrict non-academic use
- Features requiring API keys (e.g., OncoKB) may be incomplete without them
- Local binary installations need regular updates for compatibility
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| Supported clients | Claude Desktop, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Goose, Cursor, Smolagents | Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Codex, Other MCP stdio clients |
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| Tools | 31 | 11 |
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