mcp-ptitchef

Ptitchef is a French cooking site where home cooks publish their recipes. Each one gives its ingredients, its steps, often photographed one by one, its preparation and cooking times, its cost, its nutrition figures and the ratings its readers left. The site files its recipes under a tree of ingredient families, and publishes many of them in several languages.

This server connects a chat client to that site. You can walk the tree of categories, search the recipes by dish or by ingredient, browse a category or one of the site's standing lists, ask what can be made from what is in the fridge, read one recipe with its ingredients rescaled to the number of people at your table, and find the other languages a recipe was published in. It needs no API key and no account.

Version française

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Install

One-click install

Claude Code

claude mcp add ptitchef -- npx -y mcp-ptitchef

Claude Desktop, Cursor, and any client using the standard config format

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ptitchef": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mcp-ptitchef"]
    }
  }
}

Node 24 or later is required, and no environment variable has to be set.

With Docker

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ptitchef": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": ["run", "-i", "--rm", "ghcr.io/smeet666/mcp-ptitchef:1.0.1"]
    }
  }
}

-i keeps stdin open, which is where the protocol travels, and -t is left out because a TTY rewrites the stream. The container needs outbound HTTPS to www.ptitchef.com, and nothing else: no volume, no port, no credential.

Bundle, without npm

Download mcp-ptitchef-1.0.1.mcpb from the latest release and open it. A client that supports MCP bundles installs it on its own, with no npm and no configuration file to edit. The bundle carries its dependencies, so nothing is fetched at install time.

What you can ask

• « Qu'est-ce que Ptitchef a comme recettes de chou kale ? »
• "What can I cook with courgettes, feta and mint?"
• "Read me that gratin for eight people."
• "Show me the highest rated recipes on the site."
• "Is that recipe published in Spanish too?"

Ptitchef is a French site, so its recipes are found in French. The ordinary path runs from a listing to a recipe: a row carries an id, and get_recipe takes that id.

Tools

Tool	What it does
list_categories	Walks the tree of ingredient families the site files under.
search_recipes	Finds recipes by dish or by ingredient.
browse_recipes	Reads a category page by page, or a standing list.
search_by_ingredients	Answers what can be made from what a cook already has.
get_recipe	Reads one recipe, rescaled to a number of servings on request.
scale_ingredients	Rescales any ingredient list, with no request to the site.
get_recipe_translations	Lists the other languages a recipe was published in.

Start at list_categories. The site gives you the right addresses, which saves building one by hand: an address built that way lands on the site's front page.

list_categories

Reads the tree the site files its recipes under. Called with no argument it returns the families; pass a family's slug back as family to read what it holds.

Argument	Type	Required	What it does
family	string, 1 to 80 characters	no	A family's slug, to read the categories under it.
limit	integer, 1 to 200, default 20	no	Rows to serve.

In return: rows carrying slug, which comes back as family or as category; title in the site's own wording; url; description, which is null where the page carries none; and sample_children for the categories one level below.

search_recipes

Searches the recipes for a dish or an ingredient.

Argument	Type	Required	What it does
query	string, 1 to 120 characters	yes	A dish or an ingredient, in French.
limit	integer, 1 to 100, default 20	no	Rows to serve.

In return: results, rows carrying id, title, url, image_url, rating, rating_count and review_count, a counter the page prints nothing for being null. The envelope says how the site answered: kind reads category when the answer came from a category page of its own, whose total_available counts that whole category, and free_text when the site answered on its own terms on a single page, where the total counts the rows served. Those two totals count different things. kind also reads guide for a topic the site wrote by hand, where rows carry a name and an address and no total exists. Alongside come result_count, rows_seen, page, single_page and url. A listing marked single_page whose total exceeds rows_seen has a remainder the site counts and does not serve.

browse_recipes

Reads a category page by page, or one of the site's standing lists.

Argument	Type	Required	What it does
category	string, 1 to 120 characters	no	A category slug, as list_categories published it.
listing	latest, top_rated or most_viewed	no	A standing list, read instead of a category.
page	integer, 1 to 1000	no	The page of a category to read. A standing list has one page.
limit	integer, 1 to 100, default 20	no	Rows to serve.

In return: the envelope search_recipes returns, with kind reading category, standing or topic. page is the page the site served, which is the first one again when the page asked for is past the last.

search_by_ingredients

Answers what can be made from the ingredients a cook already has.

Argument	Type	Required	What it does
ingredients	array of 1 to 5 strings, 1 to 60 characters	yes	The ingredients on hand, in French.
limit	integer, 1 to 100, default 20	no	Rows to serve.

In return: the envelope the other listings return, with kind reading fridge. The site matches on its own vocabulary, so an ingredient it writes differently narrows the answer rather than widening it.

get_recipe

Reads one recipe in full, and rescales its ingredients when a number of servings is given.

Argument	Type	Required	What it does
id	string, 1 to 300 characters	yes	The id of a row from a search or a listing.
servings	integer, 1 to 500	no	Rescale the ingredients to this many servings.

In return: title, url, description, image_url, category, cuisine, difficulty in the site's own wording, author, published, modified, rating, rating_count, review_count, prep_minutes, cook_minutes, total_minutes, nutrition as published for the serving size it names, estimated_cost, keywords, faq and translations, each null where the page states nothing. steps carries the method one line per step, and illustrated_steps the same steps with the photograph the site took of each. yield says what the recipe was written for and what it was rescaled to. Every ingredient carries scaling, which reads scaled, rounded or unscaled: read it before quoting a quantity, since rounded was moved to stay usable in a kitchen.

scale_ingredients

Applies the same arithmetic to any list of French ingredient lines, with no request to the site.

Argument	Type	Required	What it does
ingredients	array of 1 to 100 strings, up to 300 chars	yes	The lines to rescale, in French.
factor	number, above 0 and up to 100	one of two	The multiplier to apply.
from_servings	number, above 0 and up to 500	one of two	How many servings the list is written for.
to_servings	number, above 0 and up to 500	one of two	How many servings are wanted.

Pass factor, or the from_servings and to_servings pair.

In return: the factor used, the rescaled ingredients in the shape get_recipe returns, and scaled_count, rounded_count and unscaled_count.

get_recipe_translations

Lists the other languages one recipe was published in, using the pairing the site publishes itself.

Argument	Type	Required	What it does
id	string, 1 to 300 characters	yes	The id of a row from a search or a listing.

In return: translations, each carrying the language tag the site publishes and the url of that version, with translation_count and the url of the French page they were read from.

Rescaling the quantities

A quantity is stated in the unit that suits it, so a line can come back in a different unit from the one the recipe used: 200 g multiplied by twenty reads 4 kg.

How finely an ingredient can be divided depends on what it is. A baguette can be cut in two, in three or in four; an egg cannot be shared out. A quantity landing between the two is rounded, and the rescaled recipe then departs a little from the proportions of the original. The line carries rounded, and its note says what was done.

The figures are this server's arithmetic, so say they were recomputed when you show them. A recipe whose page states no number of servings cannot be put to a number of people, and the answer says so.

Configuration

Every variable is optional. Set them in the env block of your client config.

Variable	Default	What it does
PTC_USER_AGENT	the project identity	Names your application to the site, with an address where a person can be reached.
PTC_MIN_INTERVAL_MS	1500	Gap between two requests, from 1000 to 60000.
PTC_TIMEOUT_MS	20000	Deadline for one request, from 1000 to 120000.
PTC_MAX_RETRIES	3	Attempts after a transient failure, from 0 to 8.
PTC_CACHE_TTL_MS	900000	How long a page stays in memory, from 0 to 86400000.
PTC_CACHE_MAX_ENTRIES	200	Pages held in memory at once, from 1 to 5000.
PTC_MAX_BODY_BYTES	8000000	The largest response read whole, from 100000 to 64000000.
PTC_BUDGET_MS	60000	The time one read owes an answer inside, retries and waits included, from 5000 to 600000.
PTC_LOG_LEVEL	error	silent, error, info or debug, written to stderr.

A value outside its range falls back to the default, and the reason is written to stderr.

Errors

Every failure carries one of six codes, a message, and where it helps a hint naming the next move.

Code	What happened	What to do
not_found	The site answered, and holds no such recipe or page.	Check the slug with list_categories, or the id with a search.
invalid_input	The arguments were refused before any request went out.	Read the message, which names the argument.
rate_limited	The site asked this client to slow down.	Wait the number of seconds the hint names and call again with the same arguments. The recipe is still there.
parse_failure	The page loaded and the expected content was absent.	Report it at the issue tracker.
network_error	The request did not complete.	Try again shortly.
timeout	The request passed its deadline or its budget.	Raise PTC_TIMEOUT_MS or PTC_BUDGET_MS, or ask for fewer rows.

As a library

The layer reading the site is published on its own, with its pacing, its cache and its errors, and with no protocol attached.

import { PtitchefClient } from "mcp-ptitchef/client";

const client = new PtitchefClient();
const { data, cached } = await client.listCategories();
console.log(data.results.length, cached);

listCategories, searchRecipes, browseRecipes, searchByIngredients and getRecipe each answer { data, cached }, and throw an error carrying one of the six codes. The floor between two requests holds here as well.

Pacing and attribution

Requests go out one at a time with at least a second and a half between them, and the floor of one second holds however the server is configured. The User-Agent always ends with the project identity and an address where a person can be reached.

Every result carries the address of the page it was read from, and source names the site. Recipes, titles and categories belong to Ptitchef and to the cooks who wrote them.

This MCP server is an unofficial project, with no affiliation to Ptitchef.

Privacy

This server collects nothing about you and sends nothing to its author. It runs on your machine, contacts www.ptitchef.com and nothing else, holds its answers in memory while it runs, and writes nothing to disk. PRIVACY.md states what a request carries and which settings change any of it.

Development

npm install
npm run build:fixtures
npm test
npm run check

Tests run against generated fixtures and make no network request. The live suite, npm run test:live, makes one request per route and runs nightly against the site itself.

Contributing

Bugs, questions and ideas belong in the issue tracker. Pull requests are welcome; opening an issue first helps agree on the shape of the change. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

MIT, see LICENSE. The recipes belong to Ptitchef and to their authors.

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mcp-ptitchef (français)

English version

Ptitchef est un site de cuisine français où des cuisiniers publient leurs recettes. Chacune donne ses ingrédients, ses étapes, souvent photographiées une à une, ses temps de préparation et de cuisson, son coût, ses valeurs nutritionnelles et les notes laissées par ses lecteurs. Le site classe ses recettes dans un arbre de familles d'ingrédients, et en publie beaucoup en plusieurs langues.

Ce serveur relie un client de conversation à ce site. On peut parcourir l'arbre des catégories, chercher des recettes par plat ou par ingrédient, lire une catégorie ou l'une des listes permanentes du site, demander ce qu'on peut faire avec ce qu'il y a dans le frigo, lire une recette avec ses ingrédients adaptés au nombre de convives, et trouver les autres langues dans lesquelles une recette a été publiée. Aucune clé d'API, aucun compte.

Installation

Installation en un clic

Claude Code

claude mcp add ptitchef -- npx -y mcp-ptitchef

Claude Desktop, Cursor, et tout client au format de configuration standard

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ptitchef": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mcp-ptitchef"]
    }
  }
}

Node 24 ou plus récent est nécessaire, et aucune variable d'environnement n'est à renseigner.

Avec Docker

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ptitchef": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": ["run", "-i", "--rm", "ghcr.io/smeet666/mcp-ptitchef:1.0.1"]
    }
  }
}

-i garde l'entrée standard ouverte, qui est le canal du protocole, et -t est omis parce qu'un TTY réécrit le flux. Le conteneur a besoin d'un accès HTTPS sortant vers www.ptitchef.com, et de rien d'autre : aucun volume, aucun port, aucun identifiant.

Bundle, sans npm

Téléchargez mcp-ptitchef-1.0.1.mcpb depuis la dernière publication et ouvrez-le. Un client qui gère les bundles MCP l'installe seul, sans npm et sans fichier de configuration à modifier. Le bundle emporte ses dépendances, donc rien n'est téléchargé à l'installation.

Ce qu'on peut demander

• « Qu'est-ce que Ptitchef a comme recettes de chou kale ? »
• « Qu'est-ce que je peux cuisiner avec des courgettes, de la feta et de la menthe ? »
• « Lis-moi ce gratin pour huit personnes. »
• « Montre-moi les recettes les mieux notées du site. »
• « Cette recette existe-t-elle aussi en espagnol ? »

Ptitchef est un site français, donc ses recettes se trouvent en français. Le chemin ordinaire va d'une liste à une recette : une ligne porte un id, et get_recipe reprend cet identifiant.

Les outils

Outil	Ce qu'il fait
list_categories	Parcourt l'arbre des familles d'ingrédients du site.
search_recipes	Trouve des recettes par plat ou par ingrédient.
browse_recipes	Lit une catégorie page par page, ou une liste permanente.
search_by_ingredients	Répond avec ce qu'on peut faire de ce qu'un cuisinier a déjà.
get_recipe	Lit une recette, adaptée à un nombre de parts sur demande.
scale_ingredients	Adapte n'importe quelle liste d'ingrédients, sans requête au site.
get_recipe_translations	Liste les autres langues où une recette a été publiée.

Commencez par list_categories. Le site vous donne les adresses correctes, ce qui évite d'en construire une à la main : une adresse construite ainsi mène à la page d'accueil du site.

list_categories

Lit l'arbre sous lequel le site classe ses recettes. Appelé sans argument, il rend les familles ; redonnez le slug d'une famille en family pour lire ce qu'elle contient.

Argument	Type	Requis	Ce qu'il fait
family	chaîne, 1 à 80 caractères	non	Le slug d'une famille, pour lire les catégories dessous.
limit	entier, 1 à 200, défaut 20	non	Lignes à servir.

En retour : des lignes portant slug, qui se redonne en family ou en category ; title dans les termes du site ; url ; description, null là où la page n'en porte pas ; et sample_children pour les catégories du niveau inférieur.

search_recipes

Cherche des recettes par plat ou par ingrédient.