DrkPxl

mcp

Tiny Air: A Practical MCP Server for Air Quality

MCP is still early. Most of the servers I see fall into two camps: wrappers around SaaS APIs (Stripe, GitHub) that are useful but boring, and multi-tool suites that try to do everything and end up doing too much. Tiny Air is an attempt to make it more useful for the everyman.

2 min read

What It Gives Your Agent

Four read-only tools:

  • get_air_quality — current AQI and category for a zip, city, or lat/lon
  • check_air_quality_threshold — boolean: is AQI above a given number right now?
  • find_nearby_stations — nearby AirNow reporting stations
  • list_aqi_categories — the AQI scale so the agent understands what the numbers mean

Connect it in two lines:

mcp_servers:
  tinyair:
    url: "https://air.drkpxl.com/mcp"

Works with Hermes, Claude Code/Desktop, and OpenClaw. If your agent speaks MCP, it can use this.

Why This Is Interesting

Your agent already has a scheduler. It already knows your zip code. It already knows how to message you. Tiny Air just gives it the data pipe. The agent decides when to check, what threshold matters, and what to do about it. A composable MCP pattern done right .

This is where I believe practical AI is heading. Not bigger models or more complex tools but just small, focused connections that let your agent handle the stuff you'd otherwise forget. Air quality is one example. There are a hundreds more.

Why Stateless

I could have built a notification service with stored zips and SMS alerts. But that's a database with PII, a privacy policy, and maintenance. Your agent already knows where you live and how to reach you. Duplicating that state into a second service is liability, not value.

Tiny Air holds nothing. It answers one question and lets the agent do the rest. No webhooks, no stored preferences, no callback URLs.

Try It

air.drkpxl.com has the full config, example recipes for Hermes, OpenClaw, and Claude, and screenshots of it running in Telegram, Discord, and Claude. Source is on GitHub.

US coverage only : AirNow.gov is a US service. If someone wants to build a non-US equivalent on OpenAQ or ECMWF, the architecture is simple enough to copy. Happy to share notes.