mcportal

MCPortal

The missing bridge between data.go.kr and the global MCP ecosystem. MCPortal normalizes Korean public-API specifications into standard OpenAPI 3.1, compiles them into MCP servers, and puts every outbound call behind a hard daily budget with backoff and caching. Fully open source, fully self-hosted.

한국어 문서: README.ko.md — this English README is the canonical document and the Korean file is a translation of it.

Accuracy disclaimer

data.go.kr publishes no "remaining quota" endpoint. MCPortal's usage ledger therefore counts only the calls that went through MCPortal, which makes it a best-effort estimate. Calls that the same serviceKey spends outside MCPortal — another script, the portal console, a different tool — never reach the ledger, so the ledger value is always a lower-bound approximation of real consumption. The axis of trust is not that estimate but the hard budget cap (CALL_BUDGET). Even when the ledger is wrong, the hard guard physically blocks calls beyond the daily cap, so the safety line against quota-related account sanctions always comes from CALL_BUDGET.

The no-key boundary

Works without any API key	Needs a data.go.kr service key
Replaying record/replay cassettes	Live API calls
The full test suite (pytest), including the record-mode tests, which run on synthetic transports	Live response sampling
Standing up an MCP server from a committed spec plus its cassette (mcportal serve <id> --replay) — from a repo checkout, or from a PyPI install pointed at one (note 1)	Ad-hoc conversion of an API that has no cassette yet
Regenerating the compile demo (examples/compile_demo.py)	Recording new cassettes
Regenerating and listing the preset bundles (mcportal compile / mcportal presets) — bundled in the wheel since 0.2.0 (note 1)	Sampling a response schema that is still unresolved (mcportal sample)
Reading quota status (mcportal quota status)	The key-dependent benchmark items K1–K3
Running the benchmark harness (the five key-free items in benchmarks/PROTOCOL.md)	—

Every demo, development and CI path in MCPortal runs without a key. The record/replay layer replays cassettes that were recorded earlier, so the same response flow can be reproduced and the whole test suite can go green with no serviceKey present. Spec-to-MCP conversion has already happened at build time — the compiled artifacts are committed under specs/ — so clone the repository and even standing up an MCP server and answering tool calls needs no key: mcportal serve 15000115 --replay serves eight tools over stdio with no serviceKey anywhere in the environment.

That sentence says clone on purpose. Replay needs a cassette, and cassettes are recorded upstream responses that stay in the repository instead of going out in the wheel (note 1), so a bare pip install mcportal has nothing to replay until it is pointed at a checkout with --presets-root <path> or MCPORTAL_PRESETS=<path>. Cassettes exist for three of the four bundles — 15081808 has none in the repository either, because it was deliberately left out of sampling (see Presets below), so that one bundle is live-only.

What does need a key is narrow: live traffic to data.go.kr, and sampling or converting an API that has no cassette yet.

Note 1 — what the wheel carries, and what it does not. Since 0.2.0, the published wheel carries the four preset bundles (16 bundle files plus the two presets/ documents, measured on the built artifact), so a plain pip install mcportal can run mcportal presets with no checkout. Since 0.2.2 the wheel also carries the three sampled_schemas.json files — 15000115, 15101612 and 15102108; 15081808 has none, because it was deliberately left out of sampling. They ship because mcportal compile --check needs them: --check does not diff files, it re-synthesizes openapi.json from its source + curation + sampled layers, so without the sampled layer an installed copy cannot reproduce the very openapi.json it shipped. On 0.2.1 as published, compile --check from a plain install reports 3 of 4 drifted and exits 3 (measured 2026-08-15); on that version pass --presets-root <checkout>/presets. 0.2.2 restores it to 4 of 4 matched, exit 0, from the install alone. Those three files carry only the field names and types inferred from the responses — zero response values — and that structure already ships inside openapi.json, so nothing is exposed that the wheel did not already carry. What the wheel still leaves out is the recorded upstream traffic itself: cassettes/ and samples/ stay in the repository only, which is why mcportal serve --replay is a checkout path. To use a different bundle set — or to give a PyPI install the cassettes — point MCPortal at a checkout with --presets-root <path> or the environment variable MCPORTAL_PRESETS=<path>. When mcportal presets finds no bundle it prints the paths it searched.

Key-free reproduction walkthrough

# 1) Compile a spec from synthetic fixtures (zero network, zero credentials).
python examples/compile_demo.py
#    -> specs/demo/openapi.json + specs/demo/samples/*.json
#    Re-running produces byte-identical output; the determinism check is
#    built into the script.

# 2) Stand up an MCP server over stdio from a committed bundle (no key).
#    Needs the [mcp] extra. --replay reads presets/<id>/cassettes/<id>.json,
#    which exists for 15000115, 15101612 and 15102108; 15081808 has none.
mcportal serve 15000115 --replay
#    -> 8 tools over stdio, zero credentials. On a PyPI install add
#    --presets-root <checkout>/presets (note 1).
#
#    The same thing without the CLI, against any spec plus any cassette:
python -c "from mcportal.mcp import build_server; \
build_server('specs/demo/openapi.json', mode='replay', \
cassette_path='<cassette path>')"
#    specs/demo/ commits the spec and the samples, not a cassette, so
#    <cassette path> must point at one you recorded yourself. That a server
#    really stands up and answers a tool call without a key is proven by the
#    last case in tests/test_mcp_wiring.py, which builds a synthetic cassette
#    in tmp_path. presets/<id>/openapi.json fits the same slot.

# 3) Regenerate the preset bundles from real published specs (no key).
#    Works from a checkout, and — since 0.2.2 started carrying the sampled
#    layer — from a plain pip install too (note 1). On 0.2.1 as published from
#    PyPI, or to point at a different bundle set, pass --presets-root <path>
#    or set MCPORTAL_PRESETS=<path>.
mcportal presets            # list
mcportal compile --check    # byte-compare committed vs regenerated (exit 3 on drift)

# 4) The whole test suite (no live network, no key, no real data).
pytest -q

Install

pip install mcportal            # core runtime (single dependency: httpx)
pip install "mcportal[mcp]"     # + the MCP conversion layer (fastmcp)

Dependency policy: the core runtime depends on httpx and nothing else. The spec-normalizing compiler (mcportal.compiler) uses only the standard library and httpx. fastmcp is required solely by mcportal.mcp and ships as the optional [mcp] extra — without it, import mcportal and the entire test suite still work, and calling into the MCP layer raises a Korean ImportError that explains how to install it. The [mcp] extra also declares anyio, because the sync-to-async bridge imports anyio.to_thread directly; httpx pulls anyio in transitively, but a direct import deserves a direct declaration so that pins and lockfiles constrain it.

import mcportal does not import mcportal.mcp — that is what keeps the import working without fastmcp installed. The MCP symbols are resolved lazily on first attribute access through a module __getattr__ (PEP 562), so from mcportal.mcp import build_server and mcportal.build_server refer to the same object. Either spelling is fine.

Single-key principle (no multi-key rotation)

MCPortal's data.go.kr profile does not support multi-key rotation. data.go.kr issues one key per development account and meters a daily call limit against it; cycling several keys to escape that limit risks violating the service's operating policy and inviting account sanctions. MCPortal respects the structure as it is and accepts a single key. When the limit is too low, the supported answer is data.go.kr's own path — registering a use case and applying for the operational tier — not more keys.

CLI

The CLI uses the standard library argparse only. Zero new runtime dependencies is a binding rule for this project, so even the terminal tables are laid out by hand (Hangul counted as double width, ASCII rules, safe on a Windows cp949 console).

mcportal quota status [--ledger PATH] [--budget N] [--day YYYY-MM-DD]
                      [--key-fp FP | --key-env VAR] [--json]
mcportal compile [PRESET_ID ...] [--presets-root PATH] [--check] [--json]
mcportal presets [--presets-root PATH] [--json] [--verbose]
mcportal sample PRESET_ID ... --key-env VAR [--budget N] [--count N]
                [--ledger PATH] [--presets-root PATH] [--json]
mcportal serve PRESET_ID [--replay | --key-env VAR] [--presets-root PATH]
                         [--name TEXT]

Subcommand	What it does
quota status	Shows today's (KST) usage, budget, remainder and state per key fingerprint. The ledger is opened read-only (mode=ro) and never created. Budget resolution order is --budget > CALL_BUDGET > profile default, and the output states which path was taken
compile	Regenerates preset bundles. Files whose content is unchanged are not rewritten. --check writes nothing and only byte-compares
presets	Lists the bundles as a table; --verbose expands the curation notes
sample	Live sampling that fills in response schemas still marked unresolved, writing the inferred schema, the response bodies and a replayable cassette. It is the one subcommand that needs a key, and the key is taken only from the environment variable named by --key-env VAR, never as a literal argument
serve	Stands one bundle up as an MCP server over stdio. The default --replay needs no key; --key-env VAR goes live through the same quota guard. Requires the [mcp] extra. Documented against a repo checkout: --replay reads presets/<id>/cassettes/<id>.json, which the wheel does not carry (note 1), so from a PyPI install pass --presets-root <checkout>/presets or set MCPORTAL_PRESETS=<checkout>/presets. Three of the four bundles have a cassette — 15081808 has none in the repository either, so it serves live only. stdout is protocol-only; every human-readable line, banner included, goes to stderr

Exit codes: 0 success (including "no ledger", "no presets" and "nothing changed" — an empty state is not a failure) / 1 execution failure / 2 usage error / 3 drift found by compile --check / 130 user interrupt.

--json prints JSON alone on stdout (no human prose mixed in, so it is pipe-safe) and sends every error to stderr. A raw service key is never printed on any path — even --key-env reads the environment variable and computes the fingerprint locally. The ledger stores no raw key, so a fingerprint is the only thing the CLI ever had available to show.

Presets — three services, four datasets

presets/ holds bundles built from real published specifications on data.go.kr. Their purpose is to demonstrate, in data rather than in code, the fix for the failure mode of naive spec conversion, where every generated tool ends up described as "list query".

ID	Service	Domain	Source kind	Operations	Data licence as published
15000115	Ministry of Government Legislation — national law information sharing service	law	rest_doc_manual	8	KOGL Type 1 (attribution)
15081808	National Tax Service — business registration validity and status lookup	business registration	odcloud_swagger	2	no restriction stated
15101612	Korea Customs Service — trade by country	customs	gw_swagger	1	no restriction stated
15102108	Korea Customs Service — import/export summary	customs	gw_swagger	1	no restriction stated

Licence wording is what data.go.kr displayed on the acquisition date recorded in each bundle. By domain there are three services, and only customs has two datasets, which is why every document writes "three services (four datasets)".

Ten of the twelve response schemas were unresolved; live sampling on 2026-08-09 settled all ten (15000115 eight, 15101612 one, 15102108 one — one call per operation, ten calls total). The inferred schemas are persisted in each bundle's sampled_schemas.json, the response bodies in samples/ and the request/response pairs in cassettes/, so the result replays offline with no key. Sampled bundles report generation_mode: "sampled" in info.x-mcportal.

The remaining two operations (15081808) were never unresolved — that source declares its response schema. That bundle was deliberately left out of sampling because its request body carries a business registration number, so its schema is declared but not measured. MCPortal does not hide either state: the live count is written into info.x-mcportal.schema_inference.unresolved in the generated document, and what each bundle still does not know is listed in its own presets/<id>/README.md. Writing down something unverified as if it were verified is against the rules of this project.

A bundle is four committed files, plus the sampling evidence where it exists:

presets/<id>/
├─ source.json           <- the spec document plus source URL, acquisition date, sha256
├─ curation.json         <- human-checked descriptions, examples, hints
├─ openapi.json          <- the merge of both layers (the committed artifact)
├─ README.md             <- provenance and open questions for this dataset
├─ sampled_schemas.json  <- schemas inferred from live samples (sampled bundles only)
├─ samples/              <- scrubbed response bodies from those calls
└─ cassettes/            <- request/response pairs for offline replay

The four files at the top ship in the wheel, and since 0.2.2 so does sampled_schemas.json where it exists — three of the four bundles — because compile --check cannot re-synthesize openapi.json without it (note 1). The recorded traffic, samples/ and cassettes/, is repository only.

• The lower layer carries zero lines of domain knowledge. mcportal.compiler.curation is a general engine that reads, validates and merges curation data; no institution or dataset name appears in the code, and a test enforces that by scanning the source strings.
• Curation does not change spec facts. It adds descriptions, examples, tags and hints. Parameter type, location and requiredness, and operation path and method, remain whatever the source spec declares. Only two channels can correct a fact, and both demand a written reason: downgrading a response schema to unresolved, and removing a parameter.
• Given the same inputs, openapi.json regenerates byte-identically. Use mcportal compile --check as a CI gate (exit code 3 on drift). One caveat: info.x-mcportal.tool_version carries the package version, so bumping the version changes all four artifacts, and regenerating is the convention when that happens.

Conventions and open items are governed by presets/README.md; provenance and terms of use for the spec metadata are governed by presets/NOTICE-DATA.md.

Architecture

Two layers at compile time, one guarded chain at run time.

COMPILE TIME  (offline: no key, no network)

  spec documents                      +--------------------------------+
   - odcloud OAS (JSON)               | lower layer: the compiler      |
   - gateway Swagger 2.0 / 3.x  --->  | zero domain knowledge          |
   - hand-mapped usage guide          | sources -> SourceSpec -> IR    |
                                      +---------------+----------------+
                                                      |
  curation.json                                       |
  (human-checked descriptions,  --------------->    merge
   examples, hints)                    upper layer: data, not code
                                                      |
                                                      v
                                         openapi.json (committed;
                                         byte-identical on rebuild)

RUN TIME  (one MCP tool call)

  MCP client
      |  tool call
      v
  FastMCP server            <- built by FastMCP.from_openapi() from openapi.json
      |
      v
  sync/async bridge  ->  MCPortalTransport
                            |-- quota guard      token bucket + SQLite ledger
                            |                    + CALL_BUDGET hard cap + backoff
                            |-- key injection    the key never enters the spec
                            |-- TTL cache
                            |-- record / replay  cassettes, scrubbed on write
                            |-- normalization    XML -> JSON, EUC-KR, error codes
                            v
                     data.go.kr      (or the cassette, in replay mode)

Two consequences of that shape are worth stating explicitly.

• Tool definitions are not hand-generated. FastMCP.from_openapi() owns the spec-to-tool conversion; MCPortal contributes the stage before it (spec normalization) and the stage after it (quota and hygiene). Version-family differences are absorbed by runtime signature introspection: it uses FastMCP.from_openapi where the class exposes it and otherwise falls back to building FastMCP(providers=[OpenAPIProvider(...)]). That is a capability check rather than a version check — from_openapi is not a 2.x-only entry point, it exists in the 3.x line too. The dependency is pinned to fastmcp==2.14.7 because that is the combination actually exercised under cassette replay; the known hard boundary is 4.0, which moves the HTTP stack to httpx2>=2.5 and therefore breaks the httpx.AsyncBaseTransport bridge the transport is built on (4.0 also re-splits the distribution into fastmcp-slim). The rationale is recorded next to the pin in pyproject.toml.
• The service key has no place to leak into. The compiler emits no security or securitySchemes and strips key parameters out of the source, so the key is never an MCP tool argument, never in a spec file, never in a prompt log. Only the fact of transport-side injection survives, as info.x-mcportal.key_injection: "transport".

The guard is wired on every default path. Budget resolution is create_client(budget=...) > the CALL_BUDGET environment variable > the profile default, and omitting the argument still wires the guard — a README that declares the hard cap to be the axis of trust cannot let the guard quietly vanish. An in-flight reservation is taken at before_call and released at after_call, so the cap holds even when an MCP server issues concurrent tool calls.

Benchmarks

The measurement plan is pre-registered. benchmarks/PROTOCOL.md fixes the items, repeat counts, statistical definitions and limitations before the harness existed, and the harness measures nothing that is not in that document. Result files embed a fingerprint of the protocol, so which revision produced a number stays checkable after the fact.

python benchmarks/harness.py --label <label>

Five key-free items are measured (replay round trip, scrubbing, compile plus determinism, quota-guard overhead, FastMCP build). Zero network calls; inputs are either fully synthetic or the committed presets. Outliers are not removed — the raw samples ship inside the result file so anyone can recompute.

Headline: quota-guard overhead is a median of +0.90 ms per call (+901,050 ns; guarded median 1.04 ms against a bare median 0.14 ms; N = 200 after 20 warmup rounds; measured 2026-08-09 on Windows 10, CPython 3.11.9, httpx 0.28.1, SQLite 3.45.1).

That headline is environment-dependent, and the environment is part of the claim. Re-running the same harness on a freshly provisioned machine on 2026-08-15 produced a guarded median of 738.9 us against a bare median of 91.0 us — an increment of +0.65 ms. Neither figure is wrong: the absolute cost tracks the host's SQLite write latency, so the number a third party reproduces will be their own. Quote the headline with its measurement environment attached, or re-measure.

Read that as an absolute increment, and read it with two facts attached. The number includes the SQLite ledger write (WAL journal mode), because that write is part of the real cost. The baseline it is subtracted from is a bare httpx.Client over an in-memory httpx.MockTransport — no socket, no I/O — so the same measurement expressed as a percentage is large by construction and is not meaningful on its own. Against a real data.go.kr round trip the comparison looks different, and MCPortal does not claim that comparison here because it has not been measured.

These numbers are the cost of the layer MCPortal adds to itself, not a comparison against competing libraries. The item that would judge whether the two-layer design pays off (K2 — tool-call success rate of naive generation versus curation) is defined only in the protocol and has not been run. Writing the definition down in advance is deliberate: it prevents picking a favourable criterion after the results are in. The live key used in 0.2.0 went to response-schema sampling only; the key-dependent benchmark items K1–K3 are out of scope for this release.

Machine-readable preset root

mcportal presets --json reports a root_source key alongside root, labelling where the adopted preset root came from: argument (an explicit --presets-root), env:MCPORTAL_PRESETS, discovered (found by the default search), or none (no root at all) — so a script can tell a deliberate root from an accidental one.

Licence

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE and NOTICE.

Provenance and terms of use for data-derived files (test fixtures, response samples, compiler artifacts) are tracked separately in NOTICE-DATA.md.

• Zero response payloads obtained by calling an API are committed. Test fixtures, cassettes and demo artifacts are all synthetic, and the key-free reproduction path stands on those synthetic fixtures alone.
• Spec metadata from public APIs (Swagger documents, request/response tables) is committed under presets/ with its source URL and acquisition date recorded. Acquisition was entirely unauthenticated: zero uses of a service key, zero gateway data calls. Spec documents contain example values the portal wrote for documentation purposes, and those are all placeholders — the per-file list of sources, terms and example values is governed by presets/NOTICE-DATA.md.
• Zero personally identifying information (real names, real business registration numbers, personal phone numbers, personal email addresses) is present. The scope of that statement is the bundle artifacts — source.json, curation.json, openapi.json and each README.md. The portal page snapshots under presets/_raw/ do retain the operating agency's public help desk email ([e-mail]), its main phone number (1566-0025) and the representative numbers of each dataset's managing department, as they appeared in the original; those are institutional contact points, not personal ones. The evidence and the full list are governed by presets/NOTICE-DATA.md §2-1.