IsItDown MCP server

This MCP server checks if websites are down by querying the IsItDownRightNow service. It provides a simple way to verify if a website is experiencing downtime and can provide information about recent outages.

Installation Options

Using Smithery

You can install the IsItDown Server for Claude Desktop automatically using Smithery:

npx -y @smithery/cli install @hesreallyhim/mcp-server-isitdown --client claude

Manual Installation

To install from source:

# Clone the repository 
git clone https://github.com/yourusername/mcp-server-isitdown.git
cd mcp-server-isitdown

# Using uv (recommended)
uv pip install -e .

# Using pip
pip install -e .

Configuration

Claude Desktop Configuration

Add this configuration to your claude_desktop_config.json file:

"isitdown": {
  "command": "/path/to/uv",
  "args": [
    "--directory",
    "/path/to/cloned/repo/src",
    "run",
    "mcp_server_isitdown"
  ]
}

Usage

Running as a Standalone Server

You can run the MCP server directly using either of these methods:

# Using the installed script
mcp-server-isitdown

# Using the Python module
python -m mcp_server_isitdown

Claude Desktop Examples

Once configured, you can ask Claude questions like:

• "Is wikipedia down right now?"
• "When was the last time reddit was down?"

Using as a Library

You can also use the server functionality in your own Python code:

from mcp_server_isitdown.server import get_website_status

# Check if a website is down (async function)
async def check_website():
    result = await get_website_status("example.com")
    print(result)  # Prints status message with up/down status

Available Tools

The server provides the following functionality:

• get_website_status: Checks if a website is currently down or not
  • Input: root_domain (string) - The root domain of the website to check (e.g., "example.com")
  • Output: A message indicating whether the website is up or down, along with information about the last recorded downtime

How to install this MCP server

For Claude Code

To add this MCP server to Claude Code, run this command in your terminal:

claude mcp add-json "isitdown" '{"command":"/path/to/uv","args":["--directory","/path/to/cloned/repo/src","run","mcp_server_isitdown"]}'

See the official Claude Code MCP documentation for more details.

For Cursor

There are two ways to add an MCP server to Cursor. The most common way is to add the server globally in the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file so that it is available in all of your projects.

If you only need the server in a single project, you can add it to the project instead by creating or adding it to the .cursor/mcp.json file.

Adding an MCP server to Cursor globally

To add a global MCP server go to Cursor Settings > Tools & Integrations and click "New MCP Server".

When you click that button the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file will be opened and you can add your server like this:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "isitdown": {
            "command": "/path/to/uv",
            "args": [
                "--directory",
                "/path/to/cloned/repo/src",
                "run",
                "mcp_server_isitdown"
            ]
        }
    }
}

Adding an MCP server to a project

To add an MCP server to a project you can create a new .cursor/mcp.json file or add it to the existing one. This will look exactly the same as the global MCP server example above.

How to use the MCP server

Once the server is installed, you might need to head back to Settings > MCP and click the refresh button.

The Cursor agent will then be able to see the available tools the added MCP server has available and will call them when it needs to.

You can also explicitly ask the agent to use the tool by mentioning the tool name and describing what the function does.

For Claude Desktop

To add this MCP server to Claude Desktop:

1. Find your configuration file:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
• Linux: ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

2. Add this to your configuration file:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "isitdown": {
            "command": "/path/to/uv",
            "args": [
                "--directory",
                "/path/to/cloned/repo/src",
                "run",
                "mcp_server_isitdown"
            ]
        }
    }
}

3. Restart Claude Desktop for the changes to take effect