Pixabay

🚀 Pixabay-MCP Server

This is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server based on Pixabay image search. It is a TypeScript-based MCP server that provides access to the Pixabay image API and demonstrates core MCP concepts in the following ways:

• A tool to search for Pixabay images
• Formatted results with image URLs and metadata
• Handling of API request errors

✨ Features

Tools

• search_pixabay_images - Search for images on Pixabay
  • Requires a search query as a mandatory parameter
  • Optional parameters include image type, orientation, and number of results per page
  • Returns a formatted list of image results with URLs

Configuration

• Requires setting the Pixabay API key as an environment variable PIXABAY_API_KEY
• Safe search is enabled by default
• Error handling for API issues and invalid parameters

📦 Installation

Step 1: Set the Pixabay API key as an environment variable

# On Windows
set PIXABAY_API_KEY=your_api_key_here

# On macOS/Linux
export PIXABAY_API_KEY=your_api_key_here

Step 2: Use it with Claude Desktop and add server configuration

On MacOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json On Windows: %APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pixabay-mcp": {
      "command": "/path/to/pixabay-mcp/build/index.js",
      "env": {
        "PIXABAY_API_KEY": "your_api_key_here"
      }
    }
  }
}

💻 Usage Examples

Basic Usage

The following steps show how to set up and run the server:

Install dependencies

npm install

Build the server

npm run build

Development with automatic rebuild

npm run watch

Advanced Usage

Debugging

Since MCP servers communicate via stdio, debugging can be challenging. We recommend using MCP Inspector, which is provided as a package script:

npm run inspector

The Inspector will provide a URL to access debugging tools in the browser.