pickuppatrol-mcp
An MCP server for PickUp Patrol — the school dismissal app. Read and change how your children leave school: their weekly default plan, one-off changes for specific dates, and the school's dismissal options and cutoff times.
Developed and maintained by AI (Claude Code). Use at your own discretion.
What it talks to
app.pickuppatrol.net runs a ServiceStack JSON API
behind an Ionic/Vue SPA. There is no published API, but the service is reachable
server-side with an ordinary HTTPS request — no browser extension, no bot wall,
no captcha. The server signs in with your own email and password and holds the
resulting session in memory.
Every request shape is captured in docs/PICKUPPATROL-API.md,
read off the shipped client rather than guessed, and exercised against a real
account — reads, a write, and its restore.
Install
// .mcp.json
{
"mcpServers": {
"pickuppatrol": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "@chrischall/pickuppatrol-mcp"],
"env": {
"PICKUPPATROL_USERNAME": "you@example.com",
"PICKUPPATROL_PASSWORD": "…"
}
}
}
}
For local development, copy .env.example to .env and fill it in.
The server starts without credentials — it answers the host's install-time probe and only reports the configuration error on the first tool call.
Tools
Reads
| Tool | What it gives you |
|---|---|
pup_get_session | The signed-in account and the students linked to it |
pup_list_students | Every student with their weekly defaults and review flag |
pup_get_student | One student in full |
pup_get_default_plans | A student's weekly default plan, day by day |
pup_list_plans | Day-by-day plans across a date range |
pup_get_plan | One student, one date — including whether it is locked |
pup_list_transportations | A school's dismissal options and the rules each imposes |
pup_get_school | School profile, notify times, cutoff times, settings |
pup_list_non_school_days | Dates no plan can be set for, and dates already changed |
pup_list_car_numbers | Car numbers the school issued to this account |
pup_healthcheck | Credentials sign in and the API answers |
Writes — every one requires confirm: true. Without it the tool makes no
change and returns a dry-run of the exact payload it would send.
| Tool | What it changes |
|---|---|
pup_set_plan | Dismissal for one or more specific dates, or clears them back to the default |
pup_set_default_plans | The weekly default plan, or clears every default |
pup_mark_defaults_reviewed | The school's "defaults need review" prompt |
Two things the tools do that the API does not
Rules are enforced before anything is sent. Each dismissal option carries its
own requirements — a note, a car number, an early-dismissal time, or a
restriction to particular students. pup_set_plan checks them against the
school's own list and refuses with the school's wording, so a rejected write is
a validation message rather than an opaque 400.
Writes are verified by re-reading. A 2xx from PickUp Patrol is not proof: a
change made after the school's cutoff is accepted and silently ignored. Every
write re-reads the affected dates and compares the transportation id and the
note — never ModifiedDate, which advances on its own and would make every
write look successful. The note is part of the proof because every dismissal
option seen so far requires one, which makes a note-only edit ordinary: an
id-only comparison would report success from a field that never had to move.
The result says verified: true/false, and names the dates that did not move.
Without the MCP server
skills/pickuppatrol-api/ is a shell-out skill covering the same API with
curl and jq, for scripts or a machine where the server is not installed.
Development
npm install
npm run build
npm test # fast
npm run test:coverage # coverage-enforced at 100%
Tests never touch the network: the transport is injected, and the MCP tools run through a real in-memory client/server pair.
Two things about the API worth knowing
GetPlanEdit returns a date's override, not the effective plan. A date with
no specific plan reads back TransportationId: null even when the student has a
weekly default for that weekday. pup_get_plan passes that through as-is;
pup_list_students is where the weekly defaults live.
Sign-in is a session cookie, not a JWT. Authenticate returns
BearerToken: null on this deployment and sets ss-id/ss-pid/ss-opt. The
client keeps whichever the server returns and sends both, so a future switch to
JWTs needs no change here.
Safety notes
- A rejected sign-in is never retried. PickUp Patrol counts failed attempts against the account and a lockout clears only through their support desk, so the error is cached and every later call fails instantly with the same message.
- The weekly-default write is a read-modify-write of the whole student record,
because the API has no default-plans endpoint. The server always reads the
student immediately before writing, and changes only
DefaultPlans. - Credentials live in
.env(gitignored) or the MCP host's config, and are never written to a result or a log.
License
MIT