bhoonidhi-mcp

bhoonidhi-mcp

An MCP server that lets an AI agent search,save, download, and cart satellite scenes from ISRO's Bhoonidhi Browse & Order portal(NRSC) in natural language. An agent can turn a sentence like "Sentinel-2 overShillong last January" into a real search against the live portal, see honestlywhat is available to download, save a search to reuse later, preview what adownload would fetch, and — once logged in — download open-access scenes orstage them to the cart.

It is a thin adapter over thebhoonidhi-downloaderSDK — the same client the bhd CLI uses — so no portal logic is duplicated.

Status

Search and save with no login; download and cart with one. The tools reachthe full archive of 41 satellite missions and 79 sensors, search the liveportal, and save searches to reusable slugs — all without credentials.Downloading open-access scenes and staging scenes to the Bhoonidhi cart need alogin, done out of band with bhd auth login (the server reuses that session).

Tools

Availability matters: an OpenData scene is not necessarily staged fordownload. search_scenes and preview_download distinguish Ready (fetch itnow) from Archived (open data, but may need a request on the portal first),so an agent does not over-promise.

Downloads run in the background, independent of the conversation:download_query returns a job_id at once and the transfer proceeds on its own.Check progress once with download_status — it reports bytes downloaded, atransfer rate, and a percent once the size is known — or follow a job tocompletion with download_wait, which blocks until it finishes (or a cappedtimeout) so an agent can delegate a background watcher and keep the conversationfree instead of sleep-looping. A job lives only as long as the server process,so once a download proves large the status recommends running a standalone bhd query download <slug> command you own instead.

Install

The server is a Python package with a console entry point, bhoonidhi-mcp.Install it from source with uv:

git clone https://github.com/geovicco-dev/bhoonidhi-mcp
cd bhoonidhi-mcp
uv sync

This exposes the bhoonidhi-mcp command at .venv/bin/bhoonidhi-mcp. The serverspeaks stdio and is launched by an MCP client — you point the client at thatcommand.

Connecting a client

Every MCP client needs the same thing: the command to launch. Use the absolutepath to the entry point (most reliable across GUI and CLI clients):

/path/to/bhoonidhi-mcp/.venv/bin/bhoonidhi-mcp

Claude Desktop / Claude Code

claude_desktop_config.json (or claude mcp add):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "bhoonidhi": {
      "command": "/path/to/bhoonidhi-mcp/.venv/bin/bhoonidhi-mcp",
      "args": []
    }
  }
}

OpenCode

~/.config/opencode/opencode.json:

{
  "mcp": {
    "bhoonidhi": {
      "type": "local",
      "command": ["/path/to/bhoonidhi-mcp/.venv/bin/bhoonidhi-mcp"],
      "enabled": true
    }
  }
}

MCP Inspector (to try it without an agent)

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector /path/to/bhoonidhi-mcp/.venv/bin/bhoonidhi-mcp

Example

Ask an agent, in plain language:

"What Sentinel-2 scenes are over Shillong in January 2024, and how many can Iactually download?"

The agent calls resolve_location for Shillong, then search_scenes, andanswers from the result — for example, that all scenes are Archived (opendata, but each may need a request on the portal before it will download), ratherthan claiming they are all ready.

Prompts to try

Copy these into any connected agent to get a feel for what it can do.

Discover the archive

• "What satellites and sensors does Bhoonidhi have?"
• "Which sensors does ResourceSat-2A carry, and at what resolution?"
• "Does Bhoonidhi have any radar satellites?"

Search for scenes

• "Find Sentinel-2 scenes over Shillong in January 2024."
• "Show me Cartosat imagery within 20 km of Bengaluru in the first half of 2024."
• "Any Sentinel-1 scenes over the Sundarbans in March 2024?"
• "What Landsat-8 imagery covers Kaziranga National Park last winter?"
• "Find MODIS scenes over the Rann of Kutch in December 2023."

Check what's available to download

• "Of those Sentinel-2 scenes, how many can I actually download right now?"
• "Which of these need to be ordered or paid for?"

Preview a download

• "Preview what downloading those scenes would fetch."

Save a search to reuse

• "Save that Sentinel-2 search so I can download it later."
• "List my saved searches."
• "Show me what's in the search I saved as ."
• "Delete the saved search ."

Download and cart (need a login — see below)

• "Am I logged in to Bhoonidhi?"
• "Download the open-data scenes from my saved search ."
• "How's that download going?"
• "Download and let me know when it's done — I'll keep working."
• "Add the priced scenes from to my cart."
• "What's in my cart this week?"

Login (for downloads and cart)

Search, saved queries, and previews need no credentials. Downloading scenes andstaging them to the cart do. Log in once, out of band — the server reuses thesame session the bhd CLI writes:

bhd auth login

The MCP server never takes a username or password as a tool argument, andauth_status never returns your token. For a headless setup with no interactivelogin, you can instead set BHOONIDHI_USERNAME / BHOONIDHI_PASSWORD in theserver's environment; the server reads them only to establish a session.

Configuration

Set as environment variables (all optional):

Development

uv sync
uv run pytest        # test suite
uv run ruff check .  # lint

License

MIT — see LICENSE.