MCP Overview

VoLCA implements the Model Context Protocol (MCP spec 2025-03-26), exposing 18 tools that let AI agents search databases, analyze supply chains, and compute impact assessment scores.

What you can do

Let Claude browse and explain your LCA database in natural language
Ask “what are the top contributors to climate change in this product?”
Run hotspot analyses, supply chain explorations, and mapping checks — all via chat

Connecting ChatGPT

In ChatGPT, go to the MCP / connectors settings and add a new custom connector.

Use these values:

Name: Volca
Server URL: http://localhost:8080/mcp
Authentication type: Bearer token
Bearer token: your Volca password

That is all most people need. You do not need to edit JSON manually.

Connecting Claude

In Claude settings, add a new MCP server.

Use these values:

Name: volca
Server URL: http://localhost:8080/mcp
Authentication: Authorization header
Header value: Bearer yourpassword

In other words:

header name: Authorization
header value: Bearer yourpassword

Connecting Claude Code (CLI)

If you use Claude Code in the terminal, run:

claude mcp add volca --transport http http://localhost:8080/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer yourpassword"

Connecting Cursor

Cursor still expects MCP JSON configuration, so add this to .cursor/mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "volca": {
      "url": "http://localhost:8080/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer yourpassword"
      }
    }
  }
}

Protocol details

Transport: Streamable HTTP (POST to /mcp)
Protocol version: 2025-03-26
Authentication: Same password as the HTTP API (Bearer token in header)
Response format: JSON-RPC 2.0

Example interaction

Once connected, you can ask Claude:

“Find electricity production in France in the ecoinvent database and compute its climate change score using EF3.1”

Claude will:

Call search_activities with name="electricity", geo="FR", database="ecoinvent"
Call list_methods to find the EF3.1 climate change method UUID
Call get_impacts with the found process ID and method
Return a formatted answer with the score and top contributing flows

See MCP Tools for the full tool reference.