# Open data and the MCP server

> A map observation is not an identification. Never eat a wild mushroom based on this data.

## Open data (CC BY 4.0 compilation, credit required)

Catalog: https://worldmushroomforaging.org/data/index.json. Human page: https://worldmushroomforaging.org/data.

- Mushroom seasonality by species and hemisphere: https://worldmushroomforaging.org/data/seasonality.json and https://worldmushroomforaging.org/data/seasonality.csv (147 rows). Records per calendar month for each catalogue mushroom, split by hemisphere. A month count is how many research-grade records fall in that month across all years, not a forecast. Hemisphere rows with fewer than 30 records, or species seen by fewer than 10 people, are left out.
- Mushroom lookalike pairs with field checks: https://worldmushroomforaging.org/data/lookalikes.json and https://worldmushroomforaging.org/data/lookalikes.csv (320 rows). Dangerous and harmless lookalikes for each guide, the field check that separates them, and whether the lookalike lists the species back. Severity words are the ones printed on each guide page and are not yet uniform across pairs, so read both pages of a pair. This is study material, not an edibility judgement.
- Mushroom guide catalogue: https://worldmushroomforaging.org/data/species.json and https://worldmushroomforaging.org/data/species.csv (108 rows). The mushroom guides on World Mushroom Foraging with names, iNaturalist taxon ids, season and habitat notes, the printed safety warning, review status and page links. Edibility ratings are deliberately not part of this dataset.
- Mushroom habitat regions: https://worldmushroomforaging.org/data/regions.json and https://worldmushroomforaging.org/data/regions.csv (10 rows). Ten worldwide habitat regions used for regional seasonality and the 90-day field signal, with bounding boxes (west, south, east, north) and hemisphere.
- Regional 90-day field signal (live, counts only): https://worldmushroomforaging.org/api/open-data/regional-signal

## MCP server

Endpoint: https://worldmushroomforaging.org/mcp. Read-only, no key, stateless Streamable HTTP: POST one JSON-RPC message, receive a JSON response. Methods: initialize, ping, tools/list, tools/call. A GET returns a short description. Server card: https://worldmushroomforaging.org/.well-known/mcp/server-card.json.

- search_species(query, limit): find guides by name, Latin name, alias or habitat words.
- get_species_guide(species): names, season, habitat, safety warning, lookalikes with field checks, sources, review status. No edibility rating.
- seasonality(species, region?, hemisphere?): records per month for a hemisphere or one of ten regions.
- in_season_near(region): mushrooms recorded recently in a region, starting, likely or ending, aggregated counts only.
- list_regions(): the ten regions and their slugs.

Every answer carries the page URL to cite and the safety notice. No tool identifies a mushroom from a photo, returns exact locations, or says whether a mushroom is edible.