@pipeworx/vessel-tracking

Live worldwide ship positions from AIS radio broadcasts. Platform key (aisstream.io), BYO accepted.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1476+ live data sources.

Tools

• live_ships_in_area(...) — vessels broadcasting right now in a bounding box or around a point, with position, speed, course, navigational status, type, destination and IMO, plus a breakdown by vessel type.
• live_ship_position(...) — live position for specific vessels by MMSI.
• ais_coverage_check(...) — whether any receiver actually covers a location, so a zero can be read correctly.

Auth

Platform key (PLATFORM_AISSTREAM_KEY), or BYO via _apiKey. Free, instant signup at https://aisstream.io.

Coverage — read this before trusting a zero

aisstream is a community network of terrestrial receivers, so coverage follows where volunteers run hardware. Verified 2026-07-27 with a 60-second subscription:

Region	Vessels heard
Mediterranean	221
English Channel	50 (30s)
Strait of Malacca	24 (30s)
Persian Gulf / Strait of Hormuz	0
Gulf of Oman	0
Red Sea / Bab el-Mandeb	0

There is no coverage of the Gulf or Red Sea. Satellite AIS — the paid product from Spire/ORBCOMM — is what covers open ocean and unreceivered coasts, and this is not that. Asking about Hormuz returns coverage: "none" with a redirect to chokepoint_status, never a bare 0.

The count field is named vessels_observed, not vessel_count, because it measures what was heard in a listening window rather than what is present. Every zero carries a coverage verdict of confirmed, none or unconfirmed.

Sampling caveat

AIS transmit intervals depend on motion: a vessel underway broadcasts every 2-10 seconds, one at anchor roughly every 3 minutes. Short windows therefore under-count stationary ships. live_ship_position is best effort by nature — a 35s window found 1 of 8 vessels confirmed transmitting moments earlier — so widen window_seconds (max 40; beyond that callers time out) or use vesselfinder_vessel for a stored last-known position.

Data sources

• Stream: wss://stream.aisstream.io/v0/stream

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vessel-tracking": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/vessel-tracking/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/vessel-tracking/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1476+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Vessel Tracking data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides
• pipeworx.io

License

MIT