Hydrata MCP Server

hydrata-mcp-server

MCP server for Hydrata Cloud — build ANUGA flood models from terrain and input layers, run simulations, track progress, and retrieve results through the Model Context Protocol.

Connect and authenticate

Endpoint: https://hydrata.com/mcp/ — Transport: Streamable HTTP.

Every tool call needs the caller's own hydrata.com credential. The server holds no identity of its own: a tools/call must carry the caller's Authorization header (HTTP Basic for a hydrata.com account), which the server forwards verbatim to the Hydrata REST API — so results are scoped by the real user's project permissions and the audit trail names them. A tools/call without it is answered with 401 and WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="hydrata.com" before any tool runs. initialize, tools/list and ping answer anonymously, so the tool catalog is browsable without an account and the MCP registry's liveness check stays true.

The server is not yet open to external accounts: there is no self-serve way to connect your own hydrata.com login to it today, and this README deliberately carries no client-side credential recipe. If you would like to use it, contact us at hydrata.com.

Tools

Version 0.2.0 exposes nineteen tools: eleven that read projects, inputs and scenarios and drive a run, and eight that build a model from terrain and input layers the agent has already uploaded. Every tool carries MCP annotations (a title; readOnlyHint on the nine read tools; destructiveHint only on cancel_run).

The hand-back: the engineer signs off in the map

Every tool that changes something (create_project, finalize_terrain_upload, get_terrain, create_time_series, attach_input_layer, create_scenario, build_scenario, start_simulation, cancel_run, retry_run) also returns:

• ui_url — https://<site>/catalogue/#/map/<base_map>?panel=…&layer=…&scenario=…&run=…, which opens the project map on the thing that changed (the Inputs panel framing the attached layer, the Hydrology panel, the scenario, the run);
• summary — numbers the engineer can check (feature count and bbox, elevation range, row count and time span, triangle estimate and price);
• say_to_user — the sentence the agent should relay.

The server's instructions tell the agent to hand the link to the user after each layer lands and to wait for the user before start_simulation. Refusals the user can fix in the map (no boundary, no External boundary edge) carry the link too. Every request the server forwards carries X-Hydrata-Client: mcp/<version> and X-Hydrata-Session: <uuid> — informational only (client-asserted), never used for authorship.

No tool accepts file contents inline. The agent moves the bytes itself — the terrain GeoTIFF to the presigned URL, a GeoJSON layer to the REST API upload endpoint — and hands the server the resulting key or upload id.

No read tool relays a presigned S3 URL. A run's result links are 6-hour capabilities carrying a temporary AWS credential, and the server forwards the caller's own credential rather than holding one, so a tool that echoed such a link would widen what an agent transcript is worth beyond what the caller asked for. Every read tool (and start_simulation) elides them, recursively, by key name (s3_*_url) and by value shape (any string carrying X-Amz-Signature / X-Amz-Security-Token, redacted in place so the rest of a log line survives); results stay viewable through the gn_layer_* WMS entries. presign_terrain_upload is the sole exception: its upload_url is the URL the caller explicitly asked for.

Typical workflow

Run a scenario that already exists:

list_projects → get_scenario → start_simulation → poll get_run_status → get_run

Import a model and run it:

create_project → presign_terrain_upload → PUT the GeoTIFF → finalize_terrain_upload → get_terrain
→ create_time_series / attach_input_layer → create_scenario → build_scenario
→ start_simulation → poll get_run_status → get_run

What is Hydrata?

Hydrata is a geospatial hydraulic modeling platform. It runs ANUGA flood simulations in the cloud — upload terrain data, configure scenarios, run simulations on managed compute (Celery, EC2, or AWS Batch), and visualise results on interactive maps.

ANUGA is an open-source hydrodynamic model developed by Geoscience Australia and the Australian National University. It solves the shallow water wave equations using finite volumes on an unstructured triangular mesh.

Development

git clone https://github.com/Hydrata/hydrata-mcp-server.git
cd hydrata-mcp-server
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest -v

Contributions welcome — see issues.

License

MIT