OpenNeuro MCP

Community MCP server wrapping the OpenNeuro GraphQL API for dataset, snapshot, and file-listing queries over the public archive of MRI, MEG, EEG, iEEG, and ECoG data.


Type	MCP server
Supplier	Quentin Cody (community; not officially endorsed by OpenNeuro / Stanford)
Availability	Beta — hosted Cloudflare Workers deployment at `open-neuro-mcp-server.quentincody.workers.dev`
Pricing	Free / OSS — MIT License with an Academic Citation Requirement (see upstream `LICENSE.md` / `CITATION.md`)
Capabilities	Read-only — public OpenNeuro data, no auth

How to install

Claude Desktop — Settings → Developer → Edit Config, add the following to claude_desktop_config.json:
```
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "openneuro": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["mcp-remote", "https://open-neuro-mcp-server.quentincody.workers.dev/sse"]
    }
  }
}
```
Restart Claude Desktop. (Claude Desktop has no native HTTP/SSE transport — the mcp-remote proxy is required.)

Claude Code — add the hosted endpoint directly (Claude Code speaks SSE/HTTP natively):

claude mcp add --transport sse openneuro https://open-neuro-mcp-server.quentincody.workers.dev/sse

Self-host (optional) — clone, deploy your own Cloudflare Worker, then point either client at http://localhost:8787/sse or your own *.workers.dev/sse URL:

git clone https://github.com/QuentinCody/open-neuro-mcp-server
cd open-neuro-mcp-server
npm install
npm run dev   # local on http://localhost:8787
# or: npm run deploy   # deploy to your own Cloudflare Workers account

What it does

openneuro_graphql_query — execute arbitrary GraphQL queries against the OpenNeuro API
Schema introspection — discover available fields and operations
Dataset / snapshot / file-listing access over the OpenNeuro archive

Primary use cases: Search OpenNeuro for MRI / MEG / EEG / iEEG / ECoG datasets matching a task or modality, inspect dataset snapshots and file manifests before download, ground analysis-pipeline planning in the actual contents of public neuroimaging datasets.

Notes

SSE transport; no authentication required for the public GraphQL endpoint. Complements the Neurosift Tools MCP (which covers DANDI + NWB) — OpenNeuro and DANDI are separate archives, so installing both gives a single Claude session reach across the major open neuroscience-data repositories.

Citation requirement: academic use must cite per upstream CITATION.md.

Sources

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